US President Donald Trump has demanded an apology from Harvard University after threatening to revoke its tax-exempt status over its stance on students’ dissent. Anvitii Rai charts how this situation came to be, and why there still might be a ray of hope for these institutions
Attempt to rein in elite US universities
Weeks after taking office, Trump signed executive orders and formed a task force to take action against the leaders of the pro-Palestine protests that swarmed US university campuses last year, terming such events as anti-semitic. This is the culmination of years of discontentment that Republican politicians and increasingly, the US citizens have had against higher education institutes for promoting political ideology; however, attempts at removing the tax-exempt status had not come to fruition. Trump has now demanded universities to enact a series of measures to ostensibly protect their Jewish student community as well as turn the focus on merit and scholarship — such demands include reporting students “hostile” to American values to the federal government; ensuring each academic department is “viewpoint diverse”; hiring an external government-approved party to audit programmes and departments “that most fuel anti-semitic harassment”; checking faculty staff for plagiarism; imposing a mask ban on campus; and discontinuing its diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programmes.
How a fund freeze will impact students & universities
Harvard university is not the first institution in Trump’s line of fire—he has already withdrawn $400 million in federal grants to New York-based Columbia University, called the epicentre of the pro-Palestine protests, as well as frozen/ suspended funding for Princeton (“dozens” of research grants), Cornell ($1 billion), Brown ($500 million+), and Northwestern ($790 million) universities, among others. Federal funding supports research projects, university hospitals, postgraduate and doctoral programmes, and student financial aid. If the funding freeze lasts, many research departments may have to halt their projects. Several researchers and university employees have received stop-work orders since last month, and many international research students have been left in limbo. Universities may also have to implement hiring freezes (like Harvard has already) and cut back on international scholarships such as the Fulbright scholarship.
Response of the universities
Columbia University was the target of criticism as it complied with the Trump administration’s demands and ousted its interim president last month. However, the BBC reported that “…on Monday Columbia struck a less compliant tone, releasing its own letter that said it was continuing “good faith talks” with the government…but also said it would “reject any agreement that would require us to relinquish our independence”.”
Harvard is the first institution to defy the President’s demands, with its President Alan Garber stating in an open letter, “No government – regardless of which party is in power – should dictate what private universities can teach, whom they can admit and hire, and which areas of study and inquiry they can pursue.” Other Ivy League schools have responded in the same vein, along with highlighting the importance of federal funding for research.
Can tax-exempt status be revoked?
Legally the US President does not have direct control over federal funding — rather, the Congress has the power to earmark federal funds. A Brookings podcast from January explained that while the President could not directly stop federal agencies from disbursing funds, the legal route would be via 1974’s Impoundment Control Act, stating that “if the executive branch wants to refuse to spend money that Congress has appropriated, it has to go through certain steps to do so.” As for revoking any entity’s tax-exempt status, Trump cannot directly order the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) to do that. Former IRS commissioner John Koskinen told the NYT that the chances of getting the IRS to actually revoke the 501(c)(3) status of a major university are almost non-existent. “ The problem is you’re causing people to spend a lot of time and money responding and defending their actions,” he said.
Remedies available to the universities
The universities can challenge the Trump administration on the basis of their First Amendment rights, which guarantees several fundamental rights. Some lawsuits have already emerged, including one from the American Association of University Professors and the American Federation of Teachers over Columbia University’s funding withdrawal, and one against the US Department of Energy filed by nine universities and three bodies representing higher education institutions, following the former’s announcement of capping its grants to research programmes. While universities cannot dip into their endowments (Harvard is the richest with a $53 billion fund) as most of this is meant for specific purposes, they could use the portion of the funds which are more flexible in nature. They can reach out to private donors as well as alumni networks for aid in legal battles. Overall, experts agree that these universities would have strength in numbers as far as lawsuits are concerned.
Meanwhile, study-abroad consultants have specified that the impact of the freeze on funding would be more stark next year as the scholarships for this year have already been secured, even if their status remains uncertain.
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