After Harvard refused to comply with demands from the Trump Administration, the President called for its tax-exempt status to be lifted on Truth Social:
Perhaps Harvard should lose its Tax Exempt Status and be Taxed as a Political Entity if it keeps pushing political, ideological, and terrorist inspired/supporting “Sickness?” Remember, Tax Exempt Status is totally contingent on acting in the PUBLIC INTEREST!
Some commentators have picked up on this call, including some who cite the 1982 decision involving Bob Jones University, in which the Supreme Court upheld the denial of tax-exempt status.
I obviously agree with many of the Trump Administration’s complaints against Harvard over its anti-free speech history and lack of diversity of viewpoints.
The anti-free speech movement in the United States began in higher education and these schools constitute the hardest silos for reform. Most faculty have refused to change their hiring trends with many departments now with no Republican or conservative faculty. Indeed, many professors at Harvard would rather bulldoze the campus than allow greater diversity of viewpoints in their departments. I have written that the current generation of faculty and administrators is destroying higher education to replicate their own ideological orthodoxy.
This is not about them. It is about the future of higher education and how we reform higher education is as important as the need to reform. Few of us would want the government to dictate hiring or teaching decisions in higher education. My book suggests some aggressive measures to reform higher education. That includes reducing funding and increasing reviews of university practices. The removal of tax-exempt status is not one of those measures.
Higher education plays a critical role in our economy. The schools are the engines of innovation and training that allow us to remain competitive in the world economy. Not only are these schools one of our largest employers, but they are also essential economic and social institutions to many local economies.
Most importantly, tax exemption should not be a status bestowed upon those adhering to the demands of whatever party is in power. Free speech and associational rights are fostered by granting this status. While Harvard and other schools have abandoned core values, educational institutions are afforded tax-exempt status.
Almost ten years ago, Congress moved to impose tax burdens on Harvard and the larger academic endowments which make profits off their investments. The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 imposed a 1.4 percent tax on those institutions. If tax-exempt status were removed, it would kick that burden up to 21 percent, causing a massive financial loss for many schools. It would likely result in an enormous reduction in research and even school closures.
Now, back to Bob Jones. I have long been critical of the IRS standards used to determine when tax exemption is not in the public interest. In the case of Bob Jones, the university was engaged in racial discrimination. However, the actual standard is far more vague and could potentially be used more broadly.
In the case of Harvard, some are arguing that anti-Semitic activities on campus can be treated as similar to the discrimination at Bob Jones. There are obvious distinctions. At Bob Jones, the discrimination was embodied in university rules and based on the school’s religious values at the time.
The danger is that the Trump Administration would open the door to highly subjective determinations that target disfavored schools. If we go down this path, a new Administration led by President Harris or Walz could target conservative schools for discriminating against other groups or viewpoints. The government would then be able to hold financial control over institutions of higher education. It could be the death knell for higher education.
Some of us have been targets of academic intolerance for years. I have had calls for my termination for decades since I testified in the Clinton impeachment. It is not easy today to be a dissenter in higher education. You are shunned, isolated, and harassed. Many conservative, libertarian, and dissenting faculty have simply left out of exhaustion. The purging of our ranks rivals the crackdowns during the McCarthy period with most faculties now running from the left to the far left.
As one of the long-standing targets of this culture, I have spent my career fighting for change. However, I do not see the advantage of replacing one source of political control by another. We still have the greatest higher education system in the world. We need to find ways to reform it, not ruin it with impulsive measures.
The problem is not Harvard as an institution. It is the biased administrators and faculty who have a stranglehold on these institutions. However, if you want squatters out of a home, you do not burn the house down.
My book details ways to reduce federal and state support for universities while organizing donors to force changes at these institutions. It will not be easy or fast. However, if we want to remain the world’s premier higher education system, we need to focus on funding and enforcement issues, not tax exemption.
Jonathan Turley is the Shapiro professor of public interest law at George Washington University and the author of “The Indispensable Right: Free Speech in an Age of Rage.”