After several recent statements by President Trump suggesting that Harvard University should lose its tax-exempt status because of what he called “political, ideological, and terrorist inspired” ideas being expressed on the Cambridge campus, the IRS has reportedly begun to consider removing Harvard’s tax exemption. Coming on the heels of its recent freeze of over $2 billion in federal funding to Harvard, such a decision displays an alarming willingness to use the levers of government specifically to suppress dissenting political viewpoints in higher education.
In posts to TRUTH Social on April 15 and 16, Trump explained his reasoning for targeting Harvard’s tax exemption. In addition to “pushing political, ideological, and terrorist inspired/supporting ‘Sickness?’,” Trump opined that Harvard had “lost its way” by hiring former Mayors Bill de Blasio and Lori Lightfoot to teach classes, “hiring almost all woke, Radical Left, idiots,” and declining to fire former President Claudine Gay from her faculty as well as her leadership position after plagiarism allegations, and generally for Harvard being a “JOKE” that teaches “Hate and Stupidity” and is unworthy of federal funding.
Using the IRS as a tool for political retribution undermines the agency’s impartiality and jeopardizes the foundational principle of equal justice under law.
One need not consider the merits of these complaints to recognize that they are, at their core, complaints about the viewpoints expressed by Harvard as an institution and by individual members of its community. As such, targeting Harvard for these viewpoints is viewpoint discrimination prohibited by the First Amendment. As a unanimous Supreme Court reminded us just last year in NRA v. Vullo, “A government official can share her views freely and criticize particular beliefs, and she can do so forcefully in the hopes of persuading others to follow her lead. . . . What she cannot do, however, is use the power of the State to punish or suppress disfavored expression.”
Threatening to strip a university of its tax-exempt status based on its expression — or that of faculty, staff, or students — sets a dangerous precedent. The Internal Revenue Code grants tax-exempt status to educational institutions that operate for the public good, without engaging in substantial political or lobbying activities, and very broadly construes the notion of the public good precisely because it is not intended to serve as referee for the intense social and political debates key to politics in a liberal democracy. Past efforts to weaponize the agency against political opponents, from President Nixon’s desire to audit those on his “enemies list” to the targeting of conservative nonprofit groups for excessive scrutiny under President Obama, have been near-universally condemned. Using the IRS as a tool for political retribution undermines the agency’s impartiality and jeopardizes the foundational principle of equal justice under law.
Many who support Trump set aside the president’s ideological justifications for removing Harvard’s tax-exempt status. They instead argue the targeting is justified because of the college’s alleged acts of discrimination, both with regard to allegations of anti-Semitism on its campus and the Supreme Court’s 2023 finding in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard that its admissions program was racially discriminatory. They point to the Court’s 1983 decision in Bob Jones University v. United States, in which it upheld the IRS’s decision to strip that university’s tax exemption because of its rules banning interracial dating and marriage.
However, the Court emphasized in that case that revoking tax-exempt status is a “sensitive” decision that should be made only when there is “no doubt” that an organization violates fundamental and longstanding federal policy, emphasizing policy agreement among all branches of government. Federal attention to Bob Jones University’s tax-exempt status spanned four different presidential administrations and left the public no reason to think the grounds for revocation were pretextual. Today, by contrast, the president is explicitly targeting a university specifically for its expression and ideological reasons.
In the more than four decades since the Bob Jones decision, it appears that no college or university has ever faced the loss of their tax exempt status over race discrimination. Both Republican and Democratic administrations have instead addressed such allegations according to the regulations implementing Title VI, which require that the government first attempt to voluntarily resolve complaints and only allows resolution through financial penalties or “other means authorized by law” after those efforts have failed, followed by formal notice and a waiting period.
FIRE staunchly opposes any governmental attempt to coerce educational institutions into ideological conformity. But the stakes here extend far beyond campus. Trump’s threat to revoke Harvard’s 501(c)(3) status doesn’t just endanger academic freedom — it sets a dangerous precedent for all nonprofits whose speech may fall out of favor with those in power. Institutions across the ideological and cultural spectrum may suddenly find themselves in the crosshairs, from the Heritage Foundation to the Center for American Progress, from Planned Parenthood to the National Right to Life Committee, from your local church to the animal shelter — and, yes, even FIRE.
Turning the tax code into a weapon against disfavored viewpoints is a dangerous departure from our nation’s core values. President Trump and many in his administration have echoed this view over the years, and for good reason. They should not now abandon it on the altar of political expediency.
