US President Donald Trump threatens to strip Harvard of its tax-exempt status after the elite US university refused to accept far-reaching policy changes ordered by the White House.
Trump already moved to freeze $2.2 billion of federal funds on Monday in retaliation for the top university’s defiance of the administration’s push to bring campuses to heel.
Trump says Harvard “should lose its Tax Exempt Status and be Taxed as a Political Entity” if it does not submit to his demands for the college to change the way it runs itself, including in the selection of students and authority for professors.
Tax-exempt status is “totally contingent on acting in the PUBLIC INTEREST,” he adds in a post on his Truth Social network.
In a letter to students and faculty, Harvard president Alan Garber vowed to defy the government, insisting that the school would not “negotiate over its independence or its constitutional rights.” Trump’s Joint Task Force to Combat Anti-Semitism responded Monday with a statement announcing the $2.2 billion hold in multi-year grants, plus a freeze on $60 million in government contracts.
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