Does the Trump Administration’s Revocation of Harvard’s Tax-Exempt Status Set Up Nonprofits and Religious Schools for Future Crackdowns?

​Elite universities have undeniably become academies of progressive ideology, in dire need of diversity of thought and opinion. They have also become bastions of racial discrimination, as the Supreme Court found in its 2023 opinion, Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard, ruling that Harvard’s admissions policy violates the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. With President Trump announcing on Friday that he will revoke Harvard’s tax-exempt status, a court might well decide that Harvard’s admissions and hiring policies, and its tolerance of antisemitism on campus, make it a legitimate target for tough action.
 
But the order to revoke Harvard’s tax-exempt status and the administration’s April 11th letter to Harvard setting conditions for continued federal funding raise other concerns that should trouble defenders of academic freedom, especially those who are conservatives.
 
The administration tied further federal funding to reforms to the school’s curriculum and culture. Whether or not Harvard needs reform, this plainly infringes on Harvard’s First Amendment rights, endeavoring to trade Harvard’s progressive “ideological capture” for a different kind of capture – outright government control. And if successful, subsequent efforts to revoke the school’s tax-exempt status will open the floodgates to future abuses of power that conservatives will live to regret.
 
This is the inherent danger of the administration’s desire to create a superhighway for federal control of academic freedom. In Harvard’s complaint filed in federal court in Massachusetts, the university quoted the Supreme Court’s Moody v. Netchoice (2024) decision that “The First Amendment does not permit the government to ‘interfere with private actors’ speech to advance its own vision of ideological balance.’”
 
Harvard didn’t have to look far for that precedent. The U.S. Supreme Court proclaimed it in 2024, when it found that government cannot suppress disfavored speech by threat of sanctions. Based on the plain text of the government’s letter, that seems exactly the administration’s aim here. 
 
New questions will arise now that President Trump is ordering the IRS to revoke Harvard’s tax-exempt status. As The Wall Street Journal pointed out in a recent editorial, some precedent exists that could support such an action. It is true that in 1983 the Supreme Court upheld the IRS’ revocation of Bob Jones University’s tax-exempt status based on its overtly racially discriminatory practices. The Court at that time reasoned that “an institution seeking tax-exempt status must serve a public purpose and not be contrary to established public policy.” But many critics of Bob Jones were still concerned about such policies being made by the IRS on the basis of no law.
 
Beyond the legal and constitutional questions, there are more practical reasons why the administration’s actions are dangerous. Remember when the IRS targeted conservative groups for enhanced scrutiny, seemingly based on ideology? IRS official Lois Lerner catalyzed a furor among the right when emails revealed her antipathy towards conservative groups she targeted for investigation. Conservatives should also remember the many times the government has attempted to overrule traditional religious beliefs, from the FBI’s targeting of “radical, traditional Catholics,” to management of the conscience rights of religiously oriented healthcare clinics.
 
Should this administration prevail in its effort to subjugate Harvard’s academic freedoms in accordance with its own ideological preferences, a precedent will be set for future administrations to control speech in other directions. Expanded powers of the presidency don’t just go away when a president leaves. They stay with the office, accumulating over time.
 
There are any number of less constitutionally dubious means of working with colleges and universities to introduce more heterodoxy into academic circles. And Harvard, for your part, you ought to respond to this moment by hiring at least a few conservatives – intellectuals who represent a large plurality of this country and, recently, a majority of its voters.

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