Trump administration targets Harvard’s tax-exempt status and international students

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Trump administration has escalated its ongoing battle with Harvard, threatening to revoke the university’s ability to host international students as the president called for withdrawing Harvard’s tax-exempt status.

The moves raise the stakes of the showdown between the White House and the nation’s oldest, wealthiest and arguably most prestigious university, which on Monday became the first to openly defy the administration’s demands related to activism on campus, antisemitism and diversity.

“I think Harvard’s a disgrace,” President Donald Trump told reporters Thursday.

The Department of Homeland Security ordered Harvard late Tuesday to turn over “detailed records” of its foreign student visa holders ’ “illegal and violent activities” by April 30. The department also said it was canceling two grants to the school totaling $2.7 million.

WATCH: Billions in grants frozen after Harvard pushes back against Trump’s demands

By taking action against international students and the school’s tax status, the administration struck at two pillars of Harvard, where international students make up 27% of the campus, and the majority of the student body is in graduate school, often conducting nationally prominent research. The school has risen to distinction by attracting the world’s top talent and large, tax-deductible gifts from the country’s richest donors.

The federal government has already frozen more than $2 billion in grants and contracts to the Ivy League institution.

Leo Gerdén, a senior from Sweden, said many international students at Harvard are “scared of speaking up” because they feel merely attending the school has put a target on their back.

“All student visas right now at Harvard are at risk, and what the Trump administration is trying to do is divide us,” Gerdén said.

“Harvard without its international community is simply not Harvard,” added Gerdén, who is studying economics and government. If the institution were unable to admit people from abroad, “it would be incredibly tough for this university, for its students, for its academic community. So we should really fight with whatever means we have to make sure that doesn’t happen.”

The threat to Harvard’s ability to host international students comes as the Trump administration has quietly deleted the records and ended the legal status of international students at schools across the country. The students have been left with no clear recourse on how to regain their legal status in the U.S. while fearing deportation.

At least 1,024 students at 160 colleges, universities and university systems have had their visas revoked or their legal status terminated since late March, according to an Associated Press review of university statements, correspondence with school officials and court records.

White House suggests tax status was under review before Trump’s post

The White House suggested IRS scrutiny of Harvard’s tax status predated the president’s post about it on Tuesday. Federal tax law prohibits senior members of the executive branch from requesting that an IRS employee conduct or terminate an audit or investigation.

Trump told reporters Thursday that a decision on revoking the university’s tax-exempt status hadn’t been made yet. “Tax-exempt status, it’s a privilege. It’s really a privilege. And it’s been abused by a lot more than Harvard, by a lot more than Harvard. So we’ll see how it all works out. “

White House spokesman Harrison Fields said separately in an email: “Any forthcoming actions by the IRS will be conducted independently of the President, and investigations into any institution’s violations of its tax status were initiated prior to the President’s TRUTH.”

But a person familiar with the matter said the Treasury Department directed Andrew De Mello, the IRS acting chief counsel, to begin the process of revoking Harvard’s tax-exempt status shortly after Trump’s post. The person spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss internal matters.

Tax exemptions enable universities to receive large donations from major funders who want to decrease their tax burdens, which was instrumental in helping Harvard amass the nation’s largest university endowment at $53 billion.

The hold on federal money for research at Harvard marked the seventh time the administration has taken such a step at one of the nation’s most elite colleges. The government is attempting to force compliance with Trump’s political agenda at schools he accuses of pushing “woke” policies and allowing antisemitism to fester.

In a letter to Harvard on Friday, Trump’s administration called for broad government and leadership reforms at the university, plus changes to its admissions policies. It also demanded that the university audit views of diversity on campus and stop recognizing some student clubs.

Separately, the House Oversight Committee said Thursday that it would open an investigation into Harvard, accusing the school of a “lack of compliance with civil rights laws.”

Harvard president says school will not submit to the administration’s orders

Harvard President Alan Garber said Monday that the university would not bend to the government’s demands. Later that day, the White House announced the freeze of more than $2.2 billion in multi-year grants and $60 million in contracts.

In a statement issued Thursday, the university said the latest threats follow “on the heels of our statement that Harvard will not surrender its independence or relinquish its constitutional rights.”

The school sticks by its stance and “will continue to comply with the law and expect the Administration to do the same.”

Any federal action taken against a Harvard-affiliated individual should “be based on clear evidence, follow established legal procedures and respect the constitutional rights afforded to all individuals,” the Thursday statement added.

WATCH: Using funding to ‘force concessions’ threatens institutions, Princeton president says

Conservative strategist Christopher Rufo said the government should respond to Harvard’s defiance by cutting all federal money and stripping nonprofit status at Harvard and other Ivies that defy federal orders. Rufo urged the government to use the same tools it used during the Civil Rights Movement to force desegregation.

“Trump needs to follow through on his threat to defund one of the Ivy League universities,” Rufo said Tuesday on social media. “Cut the funding and watch the university implode.”

Rufo said Harvard has discriminated against white and Asian American students, citing events such as graduation celebrations specific to certain ethnic groups, along with a 2021 theater performance exclusively “for Black-identifying audience members.”

Nonprofit status, which is required for donations to be tax deductible, is contingent on an organization following IRS rules governing lobbying, political campaign activity and annual reporting obligations, among other requirements.

While “it’s easy for a 501(c)(3) organization to maintain its tax exempt status,” according to IRS publications, it “can be just as easy to lose it.”

Former Harvard President Larry Summers, who also served as treasury secretary under former President Bill Clinton, decried the threat to remove Harvard’s status.

“Any self-respecting Treasury Secretary would resign rather have the Department be complicit in the weaponization of the IRS against a political adversary of the President,” he said on social media.

For the Trump administration, Harvard presents the first major hurdle in its attempt to force change at universities that Republicans say have become hotbeds of liberalism and antisemitism.

Trump’s campaign started at Columbia University, which initially agreed to several demands from the Trump administration but took a more emboldened tone after Harvard’s defiance. Columbia’s acting president, Claire Shipman, said in a campus message Monday that some of the demands “are not subject to negotiation” and that she read of Harvard’s rejection with “great interest.”

Trump has targeted schools accused of tolerating antisemitism amid a wave of pro-Palestinian protests on U.S. campuses. Some of the government’s demands touch directly on that activism, calling on Harvard to impose tougher discipline on protesters and to screen international students for those who are “hostile to the American values.”

Archon Fung, a professor of democracy at Harvard, called for “friends of academic freedom” and higher education to stand together.

“The government has an enormous amount of power – taxing power, investigatory power,” Fung said. “I don’t know who wins that struggle in the end.”

Associated Press education writers Jocelyn Gecker in San Francisco and Collin Binkley in Washington contributed to this report.