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White House takes aim at Harvard's international students, tax-exempt status

Published: 18 Apr. 2025, 12:59

People attend the National Day of Action for Higher Education rally at Foley Square in New York on April 17. The organizers oppose conservative politicians withholding funding to influence how institutions run their schools, such as a recent investigation of Harvard University for alleged noncompliance with civil rights law. [EPA/Yonhap]

The Donald Trump administration has escalated its ongoing battle with Harvard, threatening to block the university from enrolling international students as the president called for withdrawing Harvard’s tax-exempt status.

The moves raise the stakes of the showdown between the White House and the nation's oldest, wealthiest and arguably most prestigious university, which on Monday became the first to openly defy the administration’s demands related to activism on campus, antisemitism and diversity.

“I think Harvard's a disgrace,” U.S. President Donald Trump told reporters Thursday.

The Department of Homeland Security ordered Harvard on Tuesday to turn over “detailed records" of its foreign student visa holders' "illegal and violent activities” by April 30. It also said it was canceling two grants for the school totaling $2.7 million.

By taking action against international students and the school's tax status, the administration struck at two pillars of Harvard, where international students make up 27 percent of the campus, and the majority of the student body is in graduate school, often conducting globally prominent research. The school has risen to distinction by attracting the world’s top talent and large tax-deductible gifts from the country’s richest donors.

The federal government has already frozen more than $2 billion in grants and contracts for the Ivy League institution.

Leo Gerden, a senior from Sweden, said many international students at Harvard are “scared of speaking up” because they feel attending the school has put a target on their backs.

“All student visas right now at Harvard are at risk, and what the Trump administration is trying to do is divide us,” Gerden said.

“Harvard without its international community is simply not Harvard,” added Gerden, who is studying economics and government. If the institution were unable to admit people from abroad, “it would be incredibly tough for this university, for its students, for its academic community. So we should really fight with whatever means we have to make sure that doesn’t happen.”

The threat to Harvard’s ability to host international students comes as the Trump administration has quietly deleted the records and ended the legal status of international students at schools across the country. The students have been left with no clear recourse to regain their legal status in the U.S. They fear deportation.

At least 1,024 students at 160 colleges, universities and university systems have had their visas revoked or their legal status terminated since late March, according to an Associated Press review of university statements, correspondence with school officials and court records. Many students said they had no legal infractions aside from minor traffic violations.

Some of the government’s demands of Harvard touched directly on the campus activism that first triggered federal scrutiny of elite universities.

The Trump administration, in a letter on Friday, told Harvard to impose tougher discipline on protesters and to screen international students for those who are “hostile to the American values.”

It also called for broad leadership reforms at the university, changes to admissions policies and the removal of college recognition for some student clubs. The government also demanded that Harvard audit its faculty and student body to ensure wide viewpoints in every department and, if necessary, diversify by admitting additional students and hiring new faculty.

Students, faculty and members of the Harvard University community rally in Cambridge, Massachusetts, on April 17. [AP/YONHAP]

On Monday, Harvard said it would not comply, citing the First Amendment. The following day, Trump took to his Truth Social platform, questioning whether the university should lose its tax-exempt status “if it keeps pushing political, ideological and terrorist inspired/supporting ‘Sickness?’”

The White House suggested IRS scrutiny of Harvard’s tax status had already started before the president's social media post. Federal tax law prohibits senior members of the executive branch from requesting that an IRS employee conduct or terminate an audit or investigation.

“Any forthcoming actions by the IRS will be conducted independently of the President, and investigations into any institution’s violations of its tax status were initiated prior to the President’s TRUTH,” White House spokesman Harrison Fields said in an email Thursday.

However, a person familiar with the matter said the Treasury Department directed Andrew De Mello, the IRS acting chief counsel, to begin the process of revoking Harvard’s tax-exempt status shortly after Trump’s post. The person spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss internal matters.

Trump told reporters Thursday that a decision on revoking the university’s tax-exempt status hadn’t been made yet. “Tax-exempt status, it’s a privilege. It’s really a privilege. And it’s been abused by a lot more than Harvard," Trump said. "So we’ll see how it all works out."

Tax exemptions enable universities to receive large donations from major funders who want to decrease their tax burdens, which was instrumental in helping Harvard amass the nation’s largest university endowment at $53 billion.

The Trump administration has already hampered Harvard's ability to fund its research and operations. After Harvard President Alan Garber said Monday the university would not bend to the government’s demands, the White House announced the freeze of more than $2.2 billion in multiyear grants and $60 million in contracts.

The hold on federal money for research marked the seventh time the administration has taken such a step at one of the nation’s most elite colleges. Republicans say the schools have allowed antisemitism and racial discrimination to fester in the form of pro-Palestinian protests and have promoted diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives contrary to the administration's directives.

Separately, the House Oversight Committee said Thursday that it would open an investigation into Harvard, accusing the school of a “lack of compliance with civil rights laws.”

In a statement Thursday, the university reiterated: "Harvard will not surrender its independence or relinquish its constitutional rights.” Harvard, the school said, “will continue to comply with the law and expect the Administration to do the same.”

Christopher Rufo, who has pioneered several GOP strategies related to education, said the Trump administration should use against Harvard the same tools it used during the Civil Rights Movement to force desegregation, including stripping nonprofit status. Rufo said Harvard has discriminated against white and Asian American students, citing events such as graduation celebrations and a 2021 theater performance “exclusively for Black-identifying audience members.”

“Cut the funding and watch the university implode,” he said Tuesday on social media.

Nonprofit status, which is required for donations to be tax-deductible, is contingent on an organization following IRS rules governing lobbying, political campaign activity and annual reporting obligations, among other requirements.

While “it’s easy for a 501(c)(3) organization to maintain its tax-exempt status," according to IRS publications, it "can be just as easy to lose it.”

Former Harvard President Larry Summers, who also served as Treasury secretary under former President Bill Clinton, decried the threat to remove Harvard's status.

“Any self-respecting Treasury Secretary would resign rather than have the Department be complicit in the weaponization of the IRS against a political adversary of the President,” he said on social media.

Trump’s campaign to force change at elite universities started at Columbia University, which initially agreed to several demands after the Trump administration froze $400 million of its federal funding.

But the school took a more emboldened tone after Harvard’s defiance. Columbia's acting president, Claire Shipman, said in a campus message Monday that some of the demands “are not subject to negotiation” and that she read of Harvard’s rejection with “great interest.”

Archon Fung, a professor of democracy at Harvard, called for “friends of academic freedom” and higher education to stand together.

“The government has an enormous amount of power — taxing power, investigatory power,” Fung said. “I don’t know who wins that struggle in the end.”

AP