US govt bans Harvard from enroling foreign students: The many ways Trump is attacking the university

WASHINGTON - US President Donald Trump has been waging a campaign to pressure elite US colleges to make a wide range of policy changes, in what his administration has framed as an initiative to fight campus anti-Semitism and enforce civil rights protections.

In a battle between academic independence and campus oversight, the government has tried to coerce educational institutions by rescinding funding and revoking the visas of international students. 

Harvard University has borne the brunt of Mr Trump’s ire. His administration has frozen more than US$2.6 billion (S$3.4 billion) in federal research grants over Harvard’s refusal to overhaul its governance, discipline, hiring and admissions policies that are inconsistent with the White House’s agenda.

It revoked the certification of the university’s programme for international students,

meaning they can no longer attend Harvard. 

There could be more pain on the way for the Ivy League school. Mr Trump has said he will strip Harvard of its tax-exempt status - a benefit that saved it at least US$465 million in 2023, according to Bloomberg News analysis.

The Republican-led House of Representatives has passed legislation that includes a significant tax increase on the net investment from private college endowments, including Harvard’s. 

Harvard filed a lawsuit alleging that the government has threatened its independence and stifled free speech by suspending the federal research grants. It called the block on foreign student enrollment unlawful. 

What is Trump’s problem with elite universities?

Mr Trump has long railed against elite universities, which he argues foster ideas antithetical to American values and observe policies that violate laws prohibiting racial discrimination. During his 2024 election campaign, Mr Trump threatened to use taxation, fines and lawsuits to shrink “excessively large private endowments” and wrote that he would “reclaim our once great educational institutions from the radical Left and Marxist Maniacs”.

His criticism of Harvard, America’s oldest and richest university, has focused mainly on the administration’s alleged failure to adequately combat anti-Semitism.

Harvard’s campus, like many across the country, experienced a long period of turmoil after the Palestinian militant group Hamas, which the US classifies as a terrorist organisation, killed 1,200 people in Israel and kidnapped more than 200 hostages in October 2023. In the ensuing war, more than 53,000 Palestinians have died in the Gaza Strip, according to the Hamas-run health ministry. The conflict led to campus protests and complaints by some Jewish students and outside Jewish groups of rampant anti-Semitism at Harvard. 

Mr Alan Garber, a longtime provost, became the interim president of the university in January 2024 following the resignation of President Claudine Gay. In August, Harvard tapped him to be the permanent leader, and Mr Garber made changes in response to the complaints, such as adopting a formal definition of anti-Semitism and introducing new educational programming for students. 

But Mr Trump and other conservatives complained that Harvard didn’t go far enough to protect Jewish students. In an April 11 letter to the university, the Trump administration identified a group of Harvard programmes, including the Center for Middle Eastern Studies and the Divinity School, that it said “fuel anti-Semitic harassment or reflect ideological capture”.

The Department of Homeland Security said in a May 22 statement that Harvard’s leadership had “created an unsafe environment by permitting anti-American, pro-terrorist agitators to harass and physically assault individuals”. It said many of the agitators were international students.

The department also accused Harvard’s leadership of co-ordinating with the Chinese Communist Party. Republican lawmakers in Congress sent a May 19 letter to Mr Garber demanding information about the school’s links to China’s government and its military, and alleging that the university has hosted and trained members of a paramilitary organisation carrying out a genocide against the Uyghurs, a Muslim ethnic group.

What led up to the funding freeze?

On March 31, the Trump administration threatened to pull nearly US$9 billion in research grants because of what it called Harvard’s failure to “combat anti-Semitic harassment”. A federal task force to combat anti-Semitism sent demands on April 3 for governance reforms that it said Harvard must make to still get federal dollars. 

The April 11 letter laid out the administration’s revised set of demands, including that Harvard achieve “viewpoint diversity” in its academic departments; adopt strictly “merit-based” admissions and hiring practices; eliminate diversity, equity and inclusion programmes; diminish the influence of faculty “more committed to activism than scholarship”; and ban international students “hostile to American values”.  

Mr Garber rejected the demands, saying in a statement on April 14: “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.” Hours later, the US froze US$2.2 billion in multiyear grants, and on April 21, Harvard sued the government.

The situation continued to escalate. Education Secretary Linda McMahon sent a letter to Harvard on May 5 saying that the university wouldn’t be eligible for any more federal grants until it demonstrates “responsible management”. Days later, eight US agencies terminated US$450 million in grants to the university.

As the feud deepened, Harvard expanded its lawsuit on May 13 to cover the additional funding cuts.

What does Harvard’s lawsuit claim?

Harvard sued a group of US executive branch agencies and top officials in Boston federal court, claiming the funding freeze violated the university’s First Amendment right to free speech. By withholding federal funds, the government tried to “coerce Harvard to conform with the government’s preferred mix of viewpoints and ideologies,” the original complaint said. Harvard claimed the agencies sought to assert undue control of the school, and argued that the government cannot supplant Harvard’s own decision-making in combating anti-Semitism.

The suit also contended that the government violated federal regulations for cutting funding. For instance, the administration has invoked Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which bars discrimination on the basis of race, color or national origin, to justify its actions against Harvard. But Harvard claimed the act gives it the right to to work voluntarily with the government to correct any compliance failures, and the government didn’t afford the university any opportunity to do so before freezing funds.

Harvard’s amended lawsuit makes the same basic claims as the April 21 complaint – that a wide range of government agencies violated the First Amendment and the Administrative Procedure Act by abruptly cutting off funding. 

What’s the impact of the funding freeze?

In a letter to the Harvard community, Mr Garber said the consequences will be “severe and long-lasting.” He said it will affect the university’s research on childhood cancer, multiple sclerosis, Parkinson’s disease and Alzheimer’s disease. According to the lawsuit, the freeze will also impact the education of thousands of graduate students and postdoctoral fellows in science, technology, medicine and public health. 

In the last academic year, Harvard received approximately US$700 million in research funding from various federal agencies, including the Departments of Health and Human Services, Defence and Energy. As Harvard looks to counter the loss of federal funds, it has said it will free up an extra US$250 million of university money to help pay for research during the coming academic year, adding to the approximately US$500 million it already spends on research annually. Mr Garber is also voluntarily reducing his salary by 25 per cent for the year starting July 1.

Can Harvard offset the funding freeze with its endowment?

Harvard sits on an endowment valued at more than US$53 billion. But unlike a bank account, this pool can’t be tapped at any time. A portion of the endowment is paid out as an annual distribution to support the university’s budget. Much of the rest is set aside for specific purposes or tied up in illiquid assets.

What’s the impact of the block on international students?

At Harvard, nearly 6,800 international students – 27 per cent of the entire student body – come from more than 140 other countries, up from 19.6 per cent in 2006, according to the university’s data. The loss of tuition from international students will put Harvard’s finances under further pressure.  

For international students who expected to enter Harvard in the fall, the timing could not be worse. Harvard’s deadline to accept admission offers was May 1 – the same day that most other US colleges expected students to respond to their offers. 

Can a US president revoke a university’s tax-exempt status?

On May 2, Mr Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform: “We are going to be taking away Harvard’s Tax Exempt Status. It’s what they deserve!” He made the announcement after weeks of threatening a change to the school’s tax status. 

Four Democratic senators have called for an investigation into whether Mr Trump’s targeting of Harvard violates a criminal law barring the president from ordering the Internal Revenue Service to target people and organizations with investigations and audits. 

It appears Mr Trump “publicly and repeatedly broke this law when he suggested that Harvard should lose its exempt status for not bending to his will,” they said in a letter to Heather Hill, the Treasury Department’s acting inspector general for tax administration. 

Under the Internal Revenue Code, no organisation can lose its tax-exempt status until the IRS conducts a “careful objective review” of its actions and the entity has had a chance to appeal the agency’s decision, the senators wrote.

Has a university’s tax-exempt status been revoked before?

Yes, after a legal fight that spanned years. Bob Jones University in South Carolina lost its federal tax exemption in 1976 because of its policies banning interracial dating. Following a legal challenge, the decision was ultimately upheld by the Supreme Court in 1983. The university dropped the policy in 2000 and regained its tax benefits in 2017.

What’s the benefit of Harvard’s tax-exempt status?

Under the US tax code, Harvard’s contribution to society – education and research – qualifies it for tax-free status, alongside around 1,700 other colleges in the country that also operate as nonprofits.

Tax exemptions afford universities like Harvard valuable advantages. Donors to tax-exempt organizations can write off their contributions as tax deductions, and Harvard typically raises more than US$1 billion annually in such donations. Harvard also sells bonds that pay interest that’s exempt from federal taxes. The school doesn’t pay traditional property taxes on buildings used for educational purposes, instead making voluntary payments to its host cities, Cambridge and Boston.

How have other colleges and universities reacted to pressure from Trump?

In March and April, the Trump administration also issued freezes on federal funding for other elite universities, including Columbia, Cornell, Northwestern, Princeton, and the University of Pennsylvania, citing noncompliance with demands for policy changes and alleged failures to address antisemitism. 

Columbia’s response was starkly different from Harvard’s. On March 21, Columbia announced it would comply with the administration’s demands to start negotiations on restoring $400 million in frozen funding. Among other concessions, the school said it would ban the use of masks during campus protests, hire 36 “special officers” with the power to make arrests, and place its Middle Eastern, South Asian, and African studies department under increased oversight.

On April 22, more than 200 presidents and other leaders of academic institutions signed a joint letter opposing “undue government intrusion in the lives of those who learn, live, and work on our campuses” and “the coercive use of public research funding”. BLOOMBERG