As many on this blog know, I have been one of the most vocal critics of Harvard and its history of viewpoint intolerance and attacks on free speech. That includes dozens of columns, a book, and a debate at Harvard Law School denouncing the purging of Harvard’s faculty and student body of Republicans and conservatives. I hope that this work offers some context and perhaps credibility for my reason for writing this morning: the threats to remove Harvard’s tax-exempt status are fundamentally wrong. Such a move would produce lasting damage to both to higher education and the country as a whole.
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.”
I don’t think anyone or anything should be taxed on income or anything else that requires government invasiveness for enforcement and requires human labor for compliance. That said, schools are businesses, and they should be given money only by those who correspondingly value the direct advantages those businesses provide. Federal government support of education is unconstitutional, and for good reason. We don’t want any chance of government indoctrination. So-called “higher education” is not for everyone; and this comes from a Ph.D. in physics. History is replete with the tremendous successes of self-taught individuals, including craftsmen, inventors, technologists, and artists. That’s not to discount the strong positive influences that some professors can have, but some great contributors to society get their inspiration from others in the private sector.
So, let’s stop using my tax dollars to support the educational business – and that means ALL schools. Let every individual put his/her money where it counts. If we stray too far from this, there’s http://www.unitedfreestates.com.
Total BS from Jonathan Turley. “Prof.” Turley writes: “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.”
Total BS!
What innovation? ZERO INNOVATION. What training? You mean INDOCTRINATION INTO MARXIST IDEOLOGY? WORTHLESS!
And even if the schools are large employers they can pay their own way as most of the administrators and faculty of the Marxist institutions are totally worthless garbage. Harvard and their ilk can support their local communities by the local communities taxing them. Let Qatar and China and other anti-American nations pick up difference like they already have. And as the Leftistist Indoctrination Entities (aka “LIEs”) are taxed into oblivion, they will eventually be replacced by GENUINE educational institutions that teach genuine learning and thinking, instead of producing depraved, degenerate, Marxist worthless nonproductive creatures.
Income on university endowments and income from assets owned by religious organizations should be taxed like all income, active and passive should be taxed. Who is to decide what entities are more virtuous than others? IRS?
Money being 100% fungible, “tax exemptions” such as those given to Harvard, which are the subject of Turley’s article, are nothing but thinly disguised financial aid. That being the case, neither Harvard, nor any other “educational” corporation should receive such aid. There also seems to be a constitutional question. Congress is empowered by the 16th Amendment to “lay and collect” income taxes. At what point, and under what claim of authority, was that power delegated to the Executive branch? It is pretty commonly held among Constitutional scholars that Congress does not have the Constitutional authority to pass the buck to the Executive for declaring war, why would income tax operate under a different principle?
About the only federal funding that should be allowed in education should be for things that further specific federal government needs, such as providing GI Bill benefits (the existence of which enhances recruiting), funding ROTC programs and ROTC scholarships, funding medical training for persons who have committed to becoming active duty military doctors, providing K-12 schooling for children of active duty military overseas or on stateside bases, and things of that sort. Of course, these programs don’t have to only be military-related, but should be related to providing for specific government needs, and those needs should be very carefully defined, approved and overseen. Otherwise, the federal government should not be in the business of providing funding for education at any level, since that is most properly a state, local, or private responsibility.
As far as research grant funding, that also should only be for specific federal government-identified needs, meaning that most of the current federal grant funding should be eliminated. If some academic or university wants to do research in some area that is not to satisfy a specific federal government-identified need, then let the universities fund it themselves or find state or private backing and then they can feel free to research away to their heart’s content. If that was how it is, universities would be a great deal more careful on how such funding is allocated and spent, and it would be a lot less subject to waste and abuse.
VHD’s take: https://townhall.com/columnists/victordavishanson/2025/04/18/will-harvard-go-full-hillsdale-n2655733
Maybe they should, maybe they shouldn’t.
I guess that it will ultimately be something that a court will need to decide.
And that could take many months. Years even.
Oh well…anyway.
These are the New Rules that Democrats were in love with just a few months ago.
Should be fun.
Whatever happened to paying one’s fair share? Does the idea apply only to the working American?
Its interesting.
If you go to DOE a Title VI or VII violation if no proactive changes occur, it could mean a loss of funding… that’s it.
So if Harvard says F OFF to Trump… he takes away their funding.
Yet they can also review their student visa applicants too.
As to the 501(c) requirements… if Lois Lerner could harass conservatives… then they could review and probably find something that lets them remove the 501(c) status.
And Turley is right… it sets a dangerous precedence.
If we set aside egos… Is Trump going to do it or was it just a warning shot across the bow?
“it sets a dangerous precedence. ”
WTLF is so dangerous about restoring a semblance of equity to the income tax system?
#. Read Kristi Noem’s letter published in NY Times. Harvard may lose accreditation to enroll student visa holders. That’ll get their attention.
🤔 juicy one.
* one criticism: “hostile learning enviroment” change to – hostile education. Education itself is hostile.
They won’t stand up for a kid fighting cancer or for the relatives of kids brutally murdered by criminal illegal aliens . . . but they’ll stand up for a serial wife-beating member of terrorist gang MS-13 who entered the country illegally and was never legally here.
Who am I talking about?
Correctimundo! But always remember that their heroes are George Floyd, Luigi Mangione, and mamoud Khalil.
I’ll never understand how the left thinks.
There is no thinking in evidence.
It’s all about emoting, posturing and cosplaying the Days of the Noble Fight for Civil Rights.
Prof. Turley – While I absolutely agree with you that our education needs reform.
You are WRONG about how to “effectuate” that reform.
Government should not reduce funding to higher education it should eliminate it.
Government should not study higher education, or reform it or set up review comittees.
It should just GET OUT of entanglements with higher education.
This is true well beyond higher education.
Free markets will reform higher education.
If students and parents and private actors giving loans for higher education had to actually pay for the value of the higher education they were getting, then THEY would make sure that real value was delivered.
Leave reform – of higher educaiton of K-12 education of health insurance, of heatlh care, of most everything to the free market.
If you do then it is CONSUMERS who will reform things by their decisions as to what to purchase and what not to.
This is the most common sense comment here.
Harvard should lose its tax exempt status, as should Everything else.
Govenrment should not make values choices with respect to who gets favorable tax treatment.
“Subject to the jurisdiction thereof” is best demonstrated by the ability of government to call a person to jury duty.
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14th Amendment, Section 1
All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.
Harvard should ABSOLUTELY LOSE its 501(c)3 status because Harvard is no longer an educational institution. I have been hammering this point for at least 4 years on the Jonathan Turley blog, as I’ve witness and commented on the declining IQs of administrators, faculty, and students over the years. Harvard is a Leftist Indoctrination Entity (aka a “LIE”) and it primary purpose is to promote anti-America, anti-Israel, and anti-Civilization propaganda. But Harvard isn’t the only LIE. There are also Columbia, University of Pennsylvania, Northwestern, NYU, Stanford, UCLA, and on and on.
You can see the adverse impact of Harvard’s status as a LIE by looking at their scientific and medical developments. Twebnty years ago, Harvard’s researchers frequently developed important new scientific and medical findings. But today? In the last 20 years, Harvard has produced absolutely NOTHING of value to mankind. Nothing! You can see that in Harvard’s record of Nobel Prize winners in science and medicine. Twenty years ago and earlier, Harvard’s researchers regularly won the Nobel Prize. But in the last twenty years they only won one award, and it was granted for strictly political purposes, showing that the Nobel Committee is already compensating for the non-producing LIEs by ging Harvard researchers an award for work on the mRNA so-called “vaccine” (although it’s nothing of the kind). The mRNA is a dangerous and worthless creation, but it serves the political purposes of the Deep State, so they gave Harvard its “prize”.
Harvard and all the other LIEs are overdue to lose their tax-exempt status and should be fully taxed as political organizations and very bad ones at that. They don’t teach remedial math at Harvard and other LIEs for nothing. The students are dumber than ever and cannot think, can barely read and write, and can barely perform even basic mathematics.
With a $53 billion endowment, and $100,000/year cost of attendance for students, how is Harvard ever going to pay the electricity bill or pay the salaries for its 5,000 DEI employees if it has to also pay taxes?
The Supreme Court will hear oral arguments on May 15 on the federal government’s request to be allowed to implement President Donald Trump’s executive order ending birthright citizenship – the guarantee of citizenship to almost everyone born in the United States, which dates back to the post-Civil War era.
https://www.scotusblog.com/2025/04/justices-will-hear-arguments-on-trumps-effort-to-end-birthright-citizenship/
Welcome to Groogen, yay-hey, every day is the 15th of May!
“The Supreme Court will hear oral arguments on May 15 on the federal government’s request to be allowed to implement President Donald Trump’s executive order ending birthright citizenship”
It is going to be very interesting to see if and how John Roberts tries to duck a clear, credible interpretation of “subject to the jurisdiction thereof”. OTOH I have very little doubt that the spineless one will make some attempt to do just that.