Your taxes and mine are being used to support tax-exempt elite universities that willfully break the law and discriminate against Jews, whites and Asians.
It’s a slap in the face.
Yet Harvard professor Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Harvard alum Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) are accusing President Trump of “weaponizing” the IRS to strip Harvard of its 501(c)(3) status, which allows it to operate and accept donations tax-free.
Truth is, Harvard should lose that status, because it has illegally allowed the trashing of Jewish students’ civil rights — while simultaneously skirting a Supreme Court ruling that outlawed reverse discrimination against Asian and white applicants.
This isn’t about trying to make left-wing academia more balanced or less biased.
Even though section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue code bars tax-exempt organizations from engaging in “propaganda” or favoring political candidates, the IRS has always turned a blind eye to campus leftism.
No one wants the IRS to bludgeon universities into conforming to the president’s ideal of intellectual diversity — after all, under a future president, the hammer could swing the other way.
So we may have to live with the reality that most universities are bastions of left-wing indoctrination.
But calling on the IRS to stop subsidizing racial and religious discrimination is a moral imperative.
And according to Supreme Court precedent, it’s also the agency’s legal duty.
In 1983, the justices ruled that Bob Jones University’s ban on interracial marriage violated the nation’s “fundamental public policy” barring racial discrimination in education, thereby revoking the school’s tax exemption.
That case remains precedent today, though it hasn’t been used since to strip another university of its tax-exempt status.
Now Harvard is guilty of fomenting blazing Jew-hatred through its curriculum and campus climate.
The university has already confessed: Last month, it issued a 500-page report admitting it had allowed a campus environment designed to “drive Israeli students (and Jewish students who feel connected to Israel) out of student life,” and permitted instruction that “normalizes” hatred of Jews and Israel.
A confession isn’t enough, though.
Until the campus is shown to be hospitable to Jewish students, there must be a penalty.
Revoking Harvard’s 501(c)(3) status means some donors will walk — and that’s the price it should have to pay.
The IRS should not stop with Harvard.
Last year the Anti-Defamation League gave “F” grades to Princeton, Stanford and dozens of other colleges, including SUNY’s Purchase and Rockland campuses, for allowing rampant antisemitism to flourish. Columbia and Yale got Ds.
Why should taxpayers support them?
Yet a host of Ivy allies — and even some critics — are claiming ignorance as to what the revocation threat is all about.
The First Amendment-defending Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression came out against the effort, saying that it “staunchly opposes any governmental attempt to coerce educational institutions into ideological conformity.”
Amen: Any IRS investigation should be limited to stamping out illegal discrimination, not impinging on First Amendment rights or dictating the parameters of intellectual diversity.
President Barack Obama went a step further, dismissing the investigation into his alma mater as a “ham-handed attempt to stifle academic freedom.”
But if Harvard were allowing black students to be kept off its campus or letting protesters throw nooses over tree limbs, Obama would be leading a nationwide chorus of protest.
Discrimination against Jewish students is just as evil, and just as illegal.
Meanwhile, some conservatives, such as the editors of “National Review,” argue that the Supreme Court’s Bob Jones standard is too vague, and gives the IRS too much muscle.
Congress, they say, should lay out the grounds for stripping an organization of its tax exempt status.
That argument doesn’t hold water, because Title VI of the Civil Rights Act already protects Jewish students from harassment. No new law needs to reiterate that.
As for Trump, he needs to back off — and let the IRS do its job of independent review.
Federal law actually prohibits the president and other senior executive branch officials, except the Treasury Secretary, from requesting the IRS audit anyone or any organization.
Yet last week, Trump posted a message on Truth Social: “We are going to be taking away Harvard’s Tax Exempt Status. It’s what they deserve!”
That followed an April post in which he asked whether the university should “be Taxed as a Political Entity if it keeps pushing political, ideological, and terrorist inspired/supporting ‘Sickness’?”
His meddling muddies the water, giving opponents something to seize on — and detracting from the open-and-shut discrimination case against Harvard.
Zip it, Mr. President.
The university’s actions are revolting. Time to crack down — and revoking Harvard’s tax exemption is the way to do it.
Money talks.
Betsy McCaughey is a former lieutenant governor of New York and co-founder of the Committee to Save Our City.
