Ending Harvard’s Tax Exemption

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Editor’s note: On April 15, 2025, President Trump posted on Truth Social that “Harvard should lose its tax exempt status and be taxed as a political entity if it keeps pushing political, ideological , and terrorist inspired/supporting sickness.” His post echoes a proposal made by now-retired Prof. Mitchell Langbert in an article that Frontpage published on July 25, 2007, almost 18 years ago. Dr. Langbert argues that we need to reconsider subsidization of socialist, anti-Western, anti-Christian, and anti-Semitic propaganda, which has — through U.S. colleges — been violating the tax exemption requirements of Section 501(c)(3) for many decades. We republish Langbert’s 18-year-old proposal below.

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Will Taxing Colleges Save Them?
July 25, 2007
Michell Langbert

David Horowitz’s The Professors offers many examples of campus indoctrination. Evan Coyne Maloney’s forthcoming film Indoctrinate U offers still more. Universities have had trouble distinguishing between education and propaganda. The trouble intensifies each year. In the 1980s, City College’s Professor Leonard Jeffries was a lone example when he claimed that whites are “ice people.” Today, anti-Semitism and propaganda increasingly dominate college campuses.

Although agenda-driven groups like the American Association of University Professors and the New York State United Teachers claim otherwise, universities no longer defend academic freedom as the freedom to debate ideas and theories based on scientific deduction and evidence. Instead, today’s professoriate defines academic freedom as the academic collective’s freedom from external expectations. But no institution ought to enjoy complete freedom from legal and social norms. Universities have no freedom to harass Jewish students; to propagandize; or to support liberal political candidates. These limitations are not just ethical. They are enshrined in tax code section 501 (c) (3) and related regulations that grant universities tax exemptions worth tens of billions of dollars and allow donors to deduct their donations.

The possibility that established universities might incur tax liabilities, to include partial penalties, when they propagandize or engage in anti-Semitism is virgin territory for the Internal Revenue Service. Governmental agencies, including the IRS, have deferred to universities’ claims of collectivist academic freedom. But things have gotten out of hand. It is time for the IRS to take a closer look at universities’ violations of the tax code’s legal requirements upon which their tax exemptions are based.

The educational exemption under section 501(c) (3) is predicated on the principle that “no substantial part” of what universities do can involve political activities, propaganda or attempting to influence legislation. The IRS has been inclined to interpret these restrictions liberally with respect to universities. However, the IRS has not allowed the educational tax exemption to white supremacist groups that voice anti-Semitic views. Since universities have increasingly become anti-Semitic fonts, they have veered across the line that distinguishes Duke University from David Duke.

Moreover, last year, the New York Sun quoted Brooklyn College’s now-retiring provost, Roberta Matthews, as having said that “teaching is a political act.” Literal or over-zealous application of Provost Matthews’s opinion would disqualify a university from eligibility for tax exemption and tax deductibility. Section 501(c)(3) prohibits institutions from engaging in substantial degrees of political activism.

The case law concerning section 501(c)(3) is in flux, but its direction is established. In the 1959 case of Cammarano v. United States, the Supreme Court decided that monies spent for the exploitation of propaganda and lobbying are not deductible by not-for-profits like universities. In the 1979 case of Taxation with Representation of Washington v. Regan, the Supreme Court held that section 501(c)(3)’s restriction on legislative activity does not violate the First Amendment. Charities and educational institutions are free to lobby, but they have no right to a tax exemption when doing so.

With respect to propagandizing and anti-Semitism, the federal courts have held that organizations are not educational in nature when they propagate particular ideas or doctrines. Regulations have defined educational activities as involving “full and fair exposition of the pertinent facts so as to permit an individual or the public to form an independent opinion or conclusion.” In the 1980 case of Big Mama Rag Inc. v. United States, which concerned a feminist newspaper, a federal appeals court decided that the “full and fair exposition” rule was too vague. In the 1983 case of National Alliance v. United States the IRS addressed the federal courts’ vagueness concern by introducing its current methodology test, under which the IRS bases the meaning of educational on the methods that an organization uses.

The National Alliance, a white supremacist group, had engaged in pseudo-educational activities aimed to arouse in white Americans of European ancestry “an understanding of and a pride in their racial and cultural heritage and an awareness of the present dangers to that heritage.” The IRS argued that National Alliance’s methods were not educational because they failed to provide factual foundations. According to the IRS, factors indicating that an organization is not educational include presentation of viewpoints unsupported by facts; distortion of facts; use of inflammatory and disparaging terms; and express conclusions on the basis of strong emotional feelings. Yet such factors are present in today’s universities, especially in such fields such as Middle Eastern studies.

The IRS has not brought any important cases against established educational institutions. Yet, there is little question that violation of the section 501(c)(3) standards is common in universities.

Prince Alwaleed bin Talal bin Abdulaziz Alsaud gave $20 million gifts to Georgetown and Harvard Universities. Also, the United Arab Emirates donated $200,000 to Columbia University to establish a chaired professorship. Gary Tobin, Aryeh K. Weinberg and Jenna Ferer’s 2005 book Uncivil University points out that Middle Eastern Studies departments around the country are little more than propaganda organizations characterized by poor scholarship and dominated by a specific political outlook. Such Middle Eastern Studies departments are no more deserving of tax exemption than are lobbying organizations like the Committee on America Islamic Relations or the American Israel Public Affairs Committee that do not receive tax exemptions. The IRS has permitted universities an illegal tax break.

Many educators admit openly that they contravene section 501(c)(3)’s rules about tax exemption. According to David Horowitz’s The Professors, Professor Peter Kirstein, a history professor at Saint Xavier University in Chicago, has a website that states that “Teaching is…NOT a dispassionate, neutral pursuit of ‘truth.’ It is advocacy and interpretation.” Professor Kirstein’s website claims that the CIA is a terrorist organization and recommends that the agency should be abolished. Yet, the IRS has not questioned the tax deductibility of the portion of the university’s exemption that goes to finance Professor Kirstein’s propagandizing.

The most egregious examples are those that involve anti-Semitism, as documented in Tobin, et al.’s Uncivil University. A student at Berkeley was spit on and called a “f**king Jew” when she ran for student government. Emeritus Professor Helen Cullen published a letter in the University of Massachusetts student newspaper claiming that “Judaism and Jewish identity are offensive to most human beings.” The anti-Semitism on today’s college campuses is sometimes indistinguishable from the National Alliance’s. But the IRS has failed to apply its National Alliance methodology test to established universities.

The likely obstacle to the IRS’s enforcement of section 501(c)(3) is fear of the unknown. How might the IRS distinguish legitimate scholarship from increasingly prevalent propagandizing? A solution is offered by HR 3077, which passed in the House of Representatives last year as part of the Higher Education Act Reauthorization bill. The bill would establish a formal advisory board that would provide “advice, counsel and recommendations” concerning the quality of international studies programs such as Middle Eastern Studies departments. The bill was introduced because of concern that American universities have failed to provide competent advice about Middle Eastern issues. A similar concept could be applied more generally to assist the IRS. An advisory board could be established to advise the IRS as to whether tax penalties ought to be assessed on a case-by-case basis.