The Harvard saga continues. The bigger they are, the harder they fall, and Harvard will fall hard if its fight with the Trump administration continues.
The Trump administration has frozen hundreds of millions of dollars in grants and billions in future funding unless Harvard reforms itself (leading to a lawsuit), and Trump threatened to pull Harvard’s tax-exempt status.
I had a chance to discuss the dispute with Rich Edson on Fox News Live on May 3, 2025:
Transcript (auto-generated, may contain transcription errors, lightly edited for transcript clarity)
Edson:
President Trump is escalating his fight with Harvard University. Trump threatened to revoke the school’s tax exempt status. Harvard’s president condemned the move, calling it destructive and highly illegal. Let’s bring in Cornell University Law Professor, and Equal Protection project founder William Jacobson. William, thank you for joining us this afternoon. Harvard says it’s unlawful, do you think it is?
WAJ:
Well, the president can’t just pull somebody’s tax exempt status, that would have to go through the IRS process. So to that extent, they’re right. It can’t just be pulled, but it can be challenged through the IRS process. Famous case of Bob Jones University, which lost its tax exempt status. But that case took years of litigation and went all the way up to the Supreme Court. So while pulling tax exempt status, kind of is like dropping the nuclear bomb in this dispute, it’s unlikely to happen anytime soon.
Edson:
The Universities have promised to address antisemitism, in particular, all the highlights that we saw from the Ivy League schools like Harvard. Do you think that they have done that in good faith? Do you think that they’ve made progress?
WAJ:
The antisemitism problem on campuses, which is also an anti-Americanism problem, anti-westernism problem, anti-capitalism problem, the antisemitism is a symptom of a much deeper problem in higher education. And that cultural clash is really what I think is driving a lot of this.
Americans are looking at these campuses, like Harvard, and saying, why are we paying for this? Why are we funding this? And so that’s a deeper problem.
A lot of what the campuses have done, I think, is window dressing because there’s a core cultural problem on the campuses, which is that for a generation, conservatives have been purged. pro-Israel professors have been purged. At Harvard, for example, 3% of the faculty identify as conservative versus 37% of the American population, 80% identify as liberal versus 25%.
Places like Harvard always love to say, we need to look like America, but Harvard and other Ivy League schools don’t look like America because they’re liberal bubbles. And I think that’s the tension that’s underlying all this.
Edson:
When and how did this all start? I mean, this is a sample of one, but 25 years ago on a college campus, there were liberals, there were conservatives, professors almost invited you to disagree with them, and it was an exchange of ideas. When did that change?
WAJ:
Well, the far left in the United States identified the education system, not just higher education, but also K-12, as a means by which they could change society. And so they put their efforts into it. You’re right. If you look at polling about 20, 25 years ago, the split between liberal and conservative professors with 60 liberal, 40 conservative. So a balance, we always knew academia was a little to the left. Right now it’s almost 30 to one. So what has happened is these activists, such as Bill Ayers and other people who were in the Obama orbit, went into academia and they took over the hiring committees and they only hired their own for 10, 20, 30 years.
So it’s like the boiling frog. By the time you realize it’s happening, it’s too late.
Edson:
The Department of Education is not renewing this contract that is meant to provide mental health funding because there are certain spots according to the Department of Education, that you have to have hiring requirements as part of this. How pervasive is that?
WAJ:
That’s a good example of what seemingly would be a good thing to fund, which is mental health help for students, particularly related to school shootings and other traumas like that. But what has happened is the same activists who have purged academia of conservatives have used these funding vehicles to push Critical Race Theory, and Diversity, Equity and Inclusion into the school systems. And I think that’s the issue with this program is that what was supposed to be mental health counseling for students turned into an activist avenue to push DEI and the racialization of education.
People need to understand it’s not just the Harvards of the world, it’s not just higher education. The education system in general is really in crisis mode.
Edson:
William Jacobson, thanks for joining us.
WAJ:
Thank you.
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