White House plans to target university investments
Apr 16, 2025, 8:42pm CDT
Liz Hoffman
The Scoop
The next phase of the Trump administration’s pressure campaign on elite universities will focus on their financial investments, particularly in areas disfavored by the White House like clean energy and China, people familiar with the plans said.
The White House’s war on top universities, which it accuses of antisemitism and fostering progressive ideology, began two weeks ago with frozen federal funding, and escalated Wednesday to a threat to revoke the nonprofit status of Harvard University and others, a move first reported by CNN. The new acting director of the IRS has been preparing internally to challenge the tax-exempt status enjoyed by universities, even those with huge endowments — Harvard’s is $53 billion, Princeton’s is $34 billion — that operate more like hedge funds than charities.
A third phase would put university endowments themselves under the microscope. White House officials plan to examine investments in China and ESG-related stances inside these investment shops, the people said. Congress is also examining ways to tax endowment profits, some of the people said.
“It is past time for American universities to stop supporting foreign adversaries with their investment decisions, much as they should stop granting university access to supporters of terrorism,” the White House wrote in a February memo on “America-First Investments.” The memo presaged the coming crackdown, which could extend to include public universities and pensions, some of the people said.
An administration official said that any reviews of a university’s tax-exempt status by the IRS are independent and weren’t personally directed by the president...
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