The Widener Library on the Harvard University Campus in Cambridge, Mass. Harvard is at the forefront of the Trump administrations efforts to reshape higher education.
Cassandra Klos/Bloomberg/Getty Images
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Cassandra Klos/Bloomberg/Getty Images
A federal judge has once again stepped in to block the latest assault on Harvard University by the Trump administration – part of a larger escalation in the conflict between the president and elite colleges.
Trump’s effort last week to ban foreign students from entering the U.S. to attend Harvard came hours after the U.S. Education Department notified the accrediting body that audits Columbia University of the department’s finding that the Ivy League institution is in violation of antidiscrimination laws.
These latest developments are part of a broad attempt, now playing out on several fronts, by the administration to reshape academia and force higher education into alignment with the president’s political agenda.
Here’s a look at the leverage strategies the administration is using to get colleges to follow its political agenda:
Withholding federal funding
The federal government has canceled about $11 billion worth of university research funding and grants this spring. More than two dozen universities have been affected.
The cuts affect research across nearly every discipline and subject, including cancer research, diabetes treatments, new wearable technology, farming solutions and studying domestic violence. Some funds were canceled because of the shuttering or drastic cutbacks at federal departments such as USAID and the U.S. Department of Education, while others were halted in response to alleged antisemitism on campus.
More than $2 billion of those cuts affect one university: Harvard. The president has mounted an aggressive campaign against the world’s wealthiest university, charging that Harvard indoctrinates students in leftist ideologies, and that the university has failed to protect Jewish students, thus violating civil rights law.
The mechanism: Federal agencies cancelling, pausing or issuing stop-work orders on existing contracts.
Is it legal? Harvard has sued the administration over the cuts, charging the president’s actions are retaliatory and illegal. The lawsuit, filed in April, has been amended as more contracts were cancelled.
The school argues that withholding funding violates the First Amendment and that the government did not follow legal procedures. Harvard’s lawsuit questions how freezing research funds will further the administration’s goal of eliminating antisemitism on campus.
In an interview with NPR in May, Harvard President Alan Garber said, “We need to be firm in our commitments to what we stand for. And what we stand for – I believe I speak for other universities – is education, pursuit of the truth, helping to educate people for better futures.”
The next hearing in that case is scheduled for July.
Restricting international students
Harvard has nearly 7,000 international students, who make up more than a quarter of the student body. More than 1.1 million international students enrolled at U.S. colleges and universities in the 2023-24 school year. For many colleges, they represent a crucial financial lifeline and contribute about $43 billion to the U.S. economy every year.
Trump’s latest proclamation, quickly blocked temporarily by a federal judge, aims to bar students from entering the U.S. to study at Harvard. The new order cites national security concerns, including what it says are high crime rates and unchecked foreign influence on campus. It also directs the Secretary of State to consider revoking visas of foreign students at the Ivy League school.
This comes after several moves by the State Department to limit, delay, change or cancel student visas, and a move by the Department of Homeland Security to revoke Harvard’s ability to sponsor students through the department’s visa program. Those efforts have also been blocked for now in federal court.
The mechanisms: The Department of Homeland Security in May revoked Harvard’s Student Visa certification, meaning the school would no longer be able to sponsor visas for international students next year.
The president’s June 4 proclamation prevents Harvard’s international students from entering the country, citing national security concerns.
The State Department announced it would change the visa screening for international students, delay interviews for visa applications, and cancel student visas for people from China with ties to the Chinese Communist Party and those studying in “critical fields.”
Is it legal? Less than 24 hours after DHS revoked Harvard’s certification, the school sued the administration, saying the action was illegal and retaliatory.
A federal judge issued a restraining order, and later issued a preliminary injunction stopping the administration’s ban and barring the administration from attempting to limit international students at Harvard.
Last week, Harvard amended that lawsuit to include the new presidential proclamation, and the same federal judge again issued a temporary block, saying Harvard would “sustain immediate and irreparable injury before there is an opportunity to hear from all parties.”
A hearing on whether to block Trump’s proclamation indefinitely is scheduled for June 16.
The June 4 proclamation was the first time Trump has stepped in directly, using his executive powers, to limit Harvard instead of doing so through federal agencies. Rather than disqualifying Harvard students from receiving visas, the new order attempts to stop them from entering the country.
In a statement, Harvard called the move “another illegal retaliatory step” that is in violation of the school’s First Amendment rights. It also maintained it would continue enrolling international students, based on the temporary court order.
Threatening accreditation
Accreditation is the process colleges must go through to receive federal financial aid, a process aimed at ensuring that a program meets an acceptable level of quality. Trump referred to accreditation on the campaign trail as his “secret weapon” in his campaign against what he considers ideological bias in higher education.
In April, he issued an executive order directing U.S. Education Secretary Linda McMahon to “overhaul” the college accreditation system. The executive action aims to use the process as a way to hold colleges accountable for “ideological overreach” and to increase “intellectual diversity” on campus.
On June 4, the Education Department’s Office of Civil Rights sent a notice to the accrediting body that audits Columbia University, saying the school is in violation of antidiscrimination laws. The findings stem from an investigation from February looking into whether the school adequately protected Jewish students on campus.
The commission that accredits the school can revoke the university’s eligibility for federal funding if it deems that Columbia is not in compliance.
In a statement, a Columbia university spokesperson said the school takes the issue of antisemitism seriously and is working with the federal government to address it. The statement also said the university has been in touch with its accreditor.
The mechanism: The Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights determined that Columbia no longer meets accreditation standards.
Is it legal? The department has the ability to investigate schools and, if it finds a school has violated laws, can work with the accreditor to strip that school of its accreditation. There are certain procedures that must be followed, including negotiating with the university to correct problems or violations discovered.
The legal question is whether those procedures have been followed, according to Michael Dorf, a law professor at Cornell University.
“The Trump administration has failed to follow any of the required procedures,” he says. “These are not mere procedural technicalities, because in the absence of the required procedures, there is no way of validating the substantive allegations of ongoing civil rights violations.”
Threatening nonprofit status
President Trump has threatened, multiple times, to revoke Harvard’s tax-exempt status. In a post on Truth Social in April, he wrote “Remember, Tax Exempt Status is totally contingent on acting in the PUBLIC INTEREST!”
In May, he wrote, “We are going to be taking away Harvard’s Tax Exempt Status. It’s what they deserve!”
The federal government has long exempted universities from taxes because of their “educational purposes” and commitment to public service. It is not entirely unprecedented to revoke this status, though it is very rare.
In 1976, the IRS revoked Bob Jones University‘s tax-exempt status. The private Christian college in South Carolina had a policy that barred its students from interracial dating or marriage, violating the 1964 Civil Rights Act. The IRS said racial discrimination was firmly against the U.S. Constitution.
The mechanism: President Trump has said he is “taking away” Harvard’s tax-exemption, but the IRS has yet to move forward with a change. A watchdog group is suing the administration for records surrounding its efforts to revoke Harvard’s tax-exempt status.
Is it legal? The IRS does have the power to revoke tax-exempt status. But federal law bars certain members of the executive branch, including the president, from using the IRS to target specific taxpayers for political means.
“It bears emphasizing that the exemption is statutory,” says Dorf, meaning it comes from Congress. “This is not simply within the discretion of the president.”
Taxing college endowments
Some elite institutions have amassed huge endowments – Harvard’s is the largest, at about $50 billion. Republicans have long sought to curb the tax exemptions in higher education.
In 2017, Congress passed a 1.4 percent tax on university endowments, which affected a handful of the nation’s elite institutions.
The massive tax and spending bill that has recently passed the House, would increase that endowment tax using a graduated rate structure. Depending on how large the endowment is per student, tax levels could rise as high as 21%.
The Republican leadership of the House Ways and Means Committee says the new tax would hold “woke, elite universities that operate more like major corporations and other tax-exempt entities accountable.” The specifics of the tax increase aren’t final, and could shift by the time the final bill passes.
The mechanism: Congress passing legislation to increase the tax on university endowments.
Is it legal? Yes. In 2017 Congress passed a bill that added a 1.4% endowment tax.
But Dorf says the legality of the dramatic increase in the latest bill could potentially be challenged as a viewpoint-based violation of the First Amendment.
“Taxing an institution because it is ‘woke’ is unconstitutional,” he says, “in the same way that it would be unconstitutional to impose a higher tax on the basis of any other viewpoint.”