United States president Donald Trump has ramped up his conflict with elite higher-education institutions in the country, threatening to strip Harvard University’s tax-exempt status.
This escalation in what some are calling a war against educational establishments comes as Harvard refused to submit to wide-ranging government surveillance.
Harvard, an Ivy League university that is perhaps the country’s most famous educational institution, stands out for defying Trump.
In contrast, several other universities and a string of powerful law firms have folded under intense pressure from the White House in its crackdown on American institutions.
Harvard’s president, Alan Garber, said the school would not “negotiate over its independence or its constitutional rights”.
President Trump signs order to ‘eliminate’ the US Education Department
Tuesday’s threat of a major tax bill comes a day after the freezing of US$2.2 billion (HK$17.07 billion) in federal funding.
The effects are already being felt on a campus that has produced 162 Nobel Prize winners and whose alums range from Facebook co-founder Mark Zuckerberg to eight US presidents.
The university said one faculty member had just been told to halt her tuberculosis research because of “the broader funding freeze”.
But the mood was defiant.
“I love it. I think it’s amazing. I think more schools across the country need to. It shows that you’re not going to bow down, you’re not going to let free speech be taken,” student Darious Hanson told Agence France-Presse.
Trump posted on social media that non-profit Harvard “should lose its Tax Exempt Status and be Taxed as a Political Entity” if the university does not submit to his demands to change how it runs, including selection of students and authority for professors.
Trump and his White House team have justified their pressure campaign on universities as a reaction to what they say is uncontrolled antisemitism and support for the Palestinian political group Hamas.
Trump “wants to see Harvard apologise. And Harvard should apologise,” Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt told journalists.
The antisemitism allegations are based on demonstrations that swept across campuses last year, which protested the war in Gaza and US support of Israel.
Columbia University in New York – an epicentre of the protests – stood down last month and agreed to oversight of its Middle Eastern department after being threatened with a loss of US$400 million (HK$3.1 billion) in federal funds.
The Lens: Trump’s executive orders on DEI spark major lawsuit
The White House has also strong-armed dozens of universities over policies meant to encourage racial diversity among students and staff by threatening to remove federal funding.
The White House has cited similarly ideological goals in its unprecedented crackdown on law firms, pressuring them to volunteer hundreds of millions of dollars worth of legal work to support issues that Trump supports.
Harvard, the oldest and wealthiest university in the United States, is now the most prominent institution to resist Trump’s ever-growing bid for control.
The Trump administration is demanding that a wide range of Harvard departments come under outside supervision for potential antisemitism. It also seeks to require “viewpoint diversity” in student admissions and choice of professors.
Garber’s insistence that Harvard cannot “allow itself to be taken over by the federal government” sets up a likely long-running, high-profile fight.
Hardline presidential advisers such as Stephen Miller depict universities as bastions of anticonservative forces that need to be brought to heel – a message that resonates strongly with Trump’s hard-right anti-elite base.
For Trump’s opponents, Harvard’s refusal to bend marks a chance to draw a line in the sand against an authoritarian takeover.
“Harvard has set an example for other higher-ed institutions – rejecting an unlawful and ham-fisted attempt to stifle academic freedom,” former president Barack Obama wrote on X. “Let’s hope other institutions follow suit.”
Dozens of universities and other stakeholders are separately battling the Trump administration in court over broad research funding cuts that have led to staff lay-offs and created deep uncertainty among US academics.
