President Donald Trump announced that his administration will move to revoke Harvard’s tax-exempt status after the Ivy League institution refused to comply with a series of federal directives and instead sued the government.
“We are going to be taking away Harvard’s Tax Exempt Status,” Trump wrote in a Truth Social post. “It’s what they deserve!”
The move comes after a months-long standoff between the Trump administration and Harvard, which has increasingly come under fire for its far-left ideological practices, skyrocketing DEI (Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion) bureaucracy, and perceived tolerance of antisemitism on campus.
Harvard, long a bastion of liberal academia, holds the largest university endowment in the nation—an astonishing $53 billion, bolstered by $2.4 billion in gains during the 2024 fiscal year alone. These funds have been built in large part due to its favorable tax status, something Trump now says the school no longer deserves.
We are going to be taking away Harvard’s Tax Exempt Status. It’s what they deserve!
— Donald J. Trump Posts From His Truth Social (@TrumpDailyPosts) May 2, 2025
From Donald Trump Truth Social 05/02/25 08:25 AM
The dispute centers around a letter sent to Harvard on April 11 by the Department of Health and Human Services—alongside several other federal agencies—laying out five conditions for continued access to federal research funding.
The requirements, described by supporters as reasonable and long-overdue, were aimed at restoring intellectual diversity and confronting rampant antisemitism on campus.
The five demands were:
- Immediate termination of all DEI programs, which have been widely criticized for promoting ideological conformity and divisive identity politics.
- Mandated hiring and admissions reforms to ensure conservative viewpoints are represented across departments.
- Elimination of radical pro-Hamas student organizations, accused of promoting extremism and antisemitic rhetoric.
- Full disclosure of foreign funding sources, with special scrutiny on donations from adversarial nations such as China and Qatar.
Rather than comply, Harvard outright refused and continued to defend the status quo. In response, on April 15, the Trump administration froze $2.2 billion in federal research grants to the university, citing its failure to address antisemitism and ideological bias on campus.
Harvard escalated the confrontation by suing the Trump administration, arguing that the government overstepped its legal authority. Harvard President Lawrence Bacow’s successor, Alan Garber, denounced the administration’s action in a statement, accusing it of violating the school’s rights.
“The administration’s prescription goes beyond the power of the federal government,” Garber claimed. “It violates Harvard’s First Amendment rights and exceeds the statutory limits of the government’s authority under Title VI.”
Garber went further, framing the standoff as a matter of academic freedom: “No government—regardless of which party is in power—should dictate what private universities can teach, whom they can admit and hire, and which areas of study and inquiry they can pursue.”
Critics argue that Harvard is not above oversight, particularly when it benefits from billions in taxpayer-funded grants and tax privileges while simultaneously advancing political agendas and failing to protect Jewish students from hate speech and harassment.