Rep. Elise Stefanik may be a Harvard graduate, but she’s lining up with President Trump in the battle over the Ivy League university’s tax status.
Asked whether Mr. Trump did the right thing when he declared that his administration would remove Harvard’s tax-exempt status, Ms. Stefanik agreed emphatically, citing the university’s handling of campus antisemitism.
“A hundred percent President Trump did the right thing,” she said on Fox News Channel’s “Sunday Morning Futures.” “This is an issue that I have been the leader on in the House, and it takes a strong president to deliver zero tolerance when it comes to antisemitism.”
Mr. Trump shook the world of higher education with his Friday post on Truth Social, which said: “We are going to be taking away Harvard’s Tax Exempt Status. It’s what they deserve!”
A Harvard spokesperson swung back by arguing that there is “no legal basis to rescind Harvard’s tax-exempt status.”
“Such an unprecedented action would endanger our ability to carry out our educational mission,” the spokesperson said in an email.
“It would result in diminished financial aid for students, abandonment of critical medical research programs, and lost opportunities for innovation. The unlawful use of this instrument more broadly would have grave consequences for the future of higher education in America,” he said.
The administration has made it clear that universities place their financial relationship with the federal government at risk if they fail to comply with federal civil-rights laws, including Title VI, which bans discrimination in education based on race, color and national origin.
“Harvard has in recent years failed to live up to both the intellectual and civil rights conditions that justify federal investment,” said administration officials in an April 11 letter to the university.
Harvard President Alan Garber apologized Thursday for the university’s shortcomings after releasing a task force report detailing how Jewish students were bullied, ostracized and targeted on campus after the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attack on Israeli civilians.
Ms. Stefanik said that “the reality is, if you look at the report that Harvard released from its task force, this is a systematic issue that has happened not just since Oct. 7, but over decades at Harvard, whether it’s the curricula, whether it’s the professors, or whether it’s the university’s failure to enforce the rules.”
She added: “So, President Trump absolutely is taking the correct action.”
The Trump administration has taken numerous actions against Harvard, including launching a civil-rights investigation into the university and freezing $2.2 billion in multi-year contracts.
Harvard sued the administration last month over the funding freeze, calling the suspension “flatly unlawful.”
This isn’t the first time Mr. Trump has raised the issue of the university’s tax-exempt status.
Last month, he broached the issue on Truth Social, saying that “Tax Exempt Status is totally contingent on acting in the PUBLIC INTEREST,” a day after the university rejected the demands of the administration’s Joint Task Force on Anti-Semitism.
“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?,” he said in the April 16 post.
