Trump Escalates Harvard Attacks by Telling IRS to Revoke Tax Exempt Status

Donald Trump significantly escalated his war on higher education generally and on Harvard University specifically on Wednesday, telling the IRS to revoke the school’s tax exempt status.

According to CNN, which first reported the news, the IRS is now making plans to do just that, with a final decision expected in the next couple of days.

As the New York Times noted Wednesday night, Trump’s order to revoke Harvard’s tax exemption is in fact illegal. Federal law forbids the president from directing the agency to audit or investigate specific targets.

The move comes two days after the administration froze Harvard’s public funding in order to punish the school for refusing to comply with increasingly flagrant demands to prioritize right wing policy and hiring decisions.

Harvard president Alan Garber announced that the school would not comply with demands to discontinue diversity efforts, limit or outright ban student protests, install right wing faculty essentially hand-picked by the administration and spy on international students, among other things.

It was the first major university to explicitly refuse such demands. 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,” Garber said in a statement to university affiliates. “The University will not surrender its independence or relinquish its constitutional rights.”

Harvard has not issued comment about this latest attack, but legal experts say any such action would be subject to court challenges the school would likely win.

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