logo
Harvard students, faculty defend university against Trump's threat of pulling tax exemption status

Harvard students, faculty defend university against Trump's threat of pulling tax exemption status

Fox News26-05-2025

The Trump administration threatened to revoke Harvard University's tax-exempt status, prompting students and faculty members to run to its defense.
"It mustn't lose its tax exemptions," Harvey Mansfield, a retired Harvard professor of over 60 years, told Fox News Digital.
Fox News Digital met with Mansfield at his farm estate in Ipswich, Massachusetts, a rural town outside of Boston. Mansfield, 93, taught political science and political philosophy at Harvard. The author of the book "Dead White Males" first attended Harvard at age 17.
"That would force it to close its doors. That's going much too far. And the whole idea of placing tax exemption as a penalty for misbehavior by universities is, I think, exaggerated and improper," Mansfield said.
Fox News Digital was also able to speak with Kem, a native of Thailand. Kem, who did not disclose his major and last name, heard chatter of Harvard's nonprofit status being revoked.
"I think that this school does a lot of research that benefits the public good. I think any kind of rescinding of its non-profit status would probably do more harm to the American public than any kind of benefit that could happen. I hope the school and the administration come to an amicable settlement and let education proceed without disruption," Kem said.
Harvard filed a suit against the Trump administration over their policy to terminate Harvard's visa program due to "pro-terrorist conduct" at campus protests.
Leading up to Trump's latest restriction on Harvard, many international students did not want to speak with Fox News Digital about the debacle between the school and President Donald Trump.
The Ivy League school became a target of Trump's broader probe into universities' handling of anti-Semitism on campus after several schools were rocked by violent protests in the wake of the October 7 terror attacks on Israel by Hamas.
The Trump administration has frozen $2.2 billion in funding to the university and threatened to revoke its tax-exempt status due to the Ivy League school's failure to address antisemitism on campus.
The Department of Education's Task Force to Combat Anti-Semitism released a statement on May 13, citing recent reporting that "has exposed the Harvard Law Review's (HLR) pattern of endemic race discrimination when evaluating articles for inclusion in its journal."
The findings resulted in the Trump administration cutting an additional $450 million in grants from the university.
Harvard hit back with a lawsuit last month over the funding freeze, saying it was unlawful.
Andrew Hayes, a law student, told Fox News Digital that "there's certainly a lot of political discrimination."
"If we were counting the conservative faculty here, you'd see a lot more of that. You could count them all on one hand out of 150 members. I know from friends who are on the law review that there's a lot of political and racial calculus, and even racial calculus that goes into article selection," the senior added.
Leo Koerner, the president of the college's Republican club, said he does think that Harvard produces more than it takes.
The third-year history major does not think Harvard should be permanently defunded. He said the Ivy League school has administrative bloat that could be minimized to cut costs.
"I think there's a lot of bloat and that comes from the administration and it's a huge amount of deans. There are more administrators and professors than students. It's an insane thing," he said.
"I do think it produces more than it takes properly managed right now that we see a lot of problems. And we see a lot of things that are being taught and things that are not allowed to be taught, people not allowed to speak. Those are the things that Harvard is trying to work on," the junior said.
The Trump administration also shared issues with Harvard's admission policies.
The New York Times reported that Trump is using the Department of Justice to investigate whether Harvard's admissions policies comply with a Supreme Court ruling that ended affirmative action.
Spain native Berné Leon, a teaching fellow at Harvard, said Trump is using every excuse to "attack the university."
"I think that the administration considers that liberal art colleges are something that is in the way to their objectives and I think that because the university has rejected the call to essentially turn over the administration, the capacity to decide what is taught at the university or who they hire — Well, they're going to be trying to find any sort of excuse to make our life difficult in the university," Leon said.
He went on to say, "I do know that some people consider that there has still been some form of affirmative action since the Supreme Court overturned the practice. But, my understanding is that what the university does essentially is looking at the profiles of students beyond their grades, which doesn't account, as far as I know, as affirmative action at all."
"It's simply looking at the students beyond their grades," he added.
Fox News Digital reached out to Deptarment of Education for comment but did not immediately hear back.

Orange background

Try Our AI Features

Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:

Comments

No comments yet...

Related Articles

US Rep. McIver indicted on federal 'charges from skirmish at New Jersey immigration center
US Rep. McIver indicted on federal 'charges from skirmish at New Jersey immigration center

Associated Press

time15 minutes ago

  • Associated Press

US Rep. McIver indicted on federal 'charges from skirmish at New Jersey immigration center

NEWARK, N.J. (AP) — U.S. Rep. LaMonica McIver was indicted Tuesday on federal charges alleging she impeded and interfered with immigration officers outside a New Jersey detention center while Newark's mayor was being arrested after he tried to join a congressional oversight visit at the facility. Acting U.S. Attorney for New Jersey Alina Habba announced the grand jury indictment in a post on X. 'While people are free to express their views for or against particular policies, they must not do so in a manner that endangers law enforcement and the communities those officers serve,' Habba said. McIver, a Democrat, had been charged in a complaint by Habba last month with two assault charges stemming from the May 9 visit to Newark's Delaney Hall — a 1,000-bed, privately owned facility that Immigration and Customs Enforcement uses as a detention center. McIver disputed the allegations as baseless and defended her presence at the facility as part of her authorized role as a member of Congress.

Bessent Returns to Washington as US-China Talks Stretch On
Bessent Returns to Washington as US-China Talks Stretch On

Yahoo

time17 minutes ago

  • Yahoo

Bessent Returns to Washington as US-China Talks Stretch On

(Bloomberg) — SUS Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent departed trade talks with China late Tuesday in London, as delegations continued to negotiate over key tech and industrial exports and deescalating their trade war. Trump's Military Parade Has Washington Bracing for Tanks and Weaponry NY Long Island Rail Service Resumes After Grand Central Fire NYC Mayoral Candidates All Agree on Building More Housing. But Where? Senator Calls for Closing Troubled ICE Detention Facility in New Mexico California Pitches Emergency Loans for LA, Local Transit Systems Bessent told reporters he had to return to Washington in order to testify before Congress. US Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick and US Trade Representative Jamieson Greer planned to continue discussions with their Chinese counterparts 'as needed,' Bessent said. 'We have had two days of productive talks, they are ongoing,' the Treasury secretary said before leaving Lancaster House, a Georgian-era mansion near Buckingham Palace serving as the meeting site. Financial markets were closely watching Tuesday as the world's largest economies continued talks over the terms of their tariff truce brokered last month. US stocks rose to session highs after Lutnick said earlier the talks were 'going really, really well.' The teams, which had been led by Bessent and Chinese Vice Premier He Lifeng, were still holding discussions Tuesday night in order to iron out technical details, according to a Treasury official. The key issue this week is re-establishing terms of an agreement reached in Geneva last month, in which the US understood that China would allow more rare earth shipments to reach American customers. The Trump administration accused Beijing of moving too slowly, which threatened shortages in domestic manufacturing sectors. In return, the Trump administration is prepared to remove a recent spate of measures targeting chip design software, jet engine parts, chemicals and nuclear materials, people familiar with the matter said. Many of those actions were taken in the past few weeks as tensions flared between the US and China. 'Win by China' 'A US decision to roll back some portion of the technology controls would very much be viewed as a win by China,' said Dexter Roberts, nonresident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council's Global China Hub, adding that the possibility of unwinding 'any controls' seemed 'pretty much unthinkable' until recently. A month ago Beijing and Washington agreed to a 90-day truce through mid-August in their crippling tariffs to allow time to resolve many of their trade disagreements — from tariffs to export controls. Lancaster House carries historical significance. It has hosted major addresses by UK prime ministers, speeches by central bank governors and parties for Britain's royal family. At the same time, Trump's trade team is scrambling to secure bilateral deals with India, Japan, South Korea and several other countries that are racing to do so before July 9, when the US president's so-called reciprocal tariffs rise from the current 10% baseline to much higher levels customized for each trading partner. Meanwhile, Chinese President Xi Jinping on Tuesday held his first phone conversation with South Korea's newly elected President Lee Jae-myung and called for cooperation to safeguard multilateralism and free trade. 'We should strengthen bilateral cooperation and multilateral coordination, jointly safeguard multilateralism and free trade, and ensure the stability and smoothness of global and regional industrial chains and supply chains,' Xi said, according to the CCTV report. —With assistance from Colum Murphy and Stephanie Lai. New Grads Join Worst Entry-Level Job Market in Years American Mid: Hampton Inn's Good-Enough Formula for World Domination The Spying Scandal Rocking the World of HR Software Cavs Owner Dan Gilbert Wants to Donate His Billions—and Walk Again The SEC Pinned Its Hack on a Few Hapless Day Traders. The Full Story Is Far More Troubling ©2025 Bloomberg L.P. Error in retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data

DOWNLOAD THE APP

Get Started Now: Download the App

Ready to dive into the world of global news and events? Download our app today from your preferred app store and start exploring.
app-storeplay-store