Harvard, Meet Bob Jones

 by John Hinderaker

When I first saw President Trump’s suggestion that Harvard might lose its tax-exempt status, in addition to federal funding, I considered it mere Trumpian bombast. But Randy Barnett’s comment puts it in a different light:

It had been a long time since I had thought about the Bob Jones case, decided in 1983, so I looked it up. You can read the Supreme Court’s decision here. Bob Jones was a 501(c)(3) charitable organization, and it had a policy that prohibited interracial dating or marriage. Because of that policy, the IRS revoked Bob Jones’s tax-exempt status. The case reached the Supreme Court, which upheld the IRS’s action on an 8-1 vote. The Court’s holding was unambiguous:

The IRS’s 1970 interpretation of § 501(c)(3) was correct. It would be wholly incompatible with the concepts underlying tax exemption to grant tax-exempt status to racially discriminatory private educational entities. Whatever may be the rationale for such private schools’ policies, racial discrimination in education is contrary to public policy. Racially discriminatory educational institutions cannot be viewed as conferring a public benefit within the above “charitable” concept or within the congressional intent underlying § 501(c)(3).

Emphasis added. I am sure Harvard never imagined that it would fall under the same condemnation that befell Bob Jones University. But why shouldn’t it? Hasn’t the Supreme Court already found, in Students For Fair Admissions, Inc. v. President and Fellows of Harvard College, that Harvard engages in illegal race discrimination? Yes. That is the holding in the case:

The universities’ main response to these criticisms is, essentially, “trust us.” None of the questions recited above need answering, they say, because universities are “owed deference” when using race to benefit some applicants but not others. Brief for University Respondents in No. 21–707, at 39. It is true that our cases have recognized a “tradition of giving a degree of deference to a university’s academic decisions.” Grutter, 539 U. S., at 328. But we have been unmistakably clear that any deference must exist “within constitutionally prescribed limits,” ibid., and that “deference does not imply abandonment or abdication of judicial review,” Miller–El v. Cockrell, 537 U. S. 322, 340 (2003). Universities may define their missions as they see fit. The Constitution defines ours. Courts may not license separating students on the basis of race without an exceedingly persuasive justification that is measurable and concrete enough to permit judicial review. As this Court has repeatedly reaffirmed, “[r]acial classifications are simply too pernicious to permit any but the most exact connection between justification and classification.” Gratz v. Bollinger, 539 U. S. 244, 270 (2003). The programs at issue here do not satisfy that standard.

Emphasis added. I doubt that the people who run Harvard have internalized the fact that they lost the Students for Fair Admissions case because they engaged in illegal race discrimination. I am sure they feel as virtuous as they always have. I don’t know whether they have modified their admissions procedures to conform to the SFFA ruling, or not. My guess is that they are lying low, hoping for future Democratic administrations that will shift the balance on the Supreme Court and, once again, approve of race discrimination.

But in the meantime, how is Harvard different from Bob Jones University? They are different in one important respect: Bob Jones’s policy may have been benighted, but it was based on its founders’ understanding of scripture, and the university stood behind it. Harvard, a slipperier institution, will never admit what the Supreme Court has ruled: that its practices are racially discriminatory.

The key question, I think, is whether Harvard has complied with the Supreme Court’s ruling in the SFFA case, or whether it continues to engage in illegal discrimination. If the former, it wouldn’t be appropriate for the IRS to revoke its 501(c)(3) status. But if Harvard is a scofflaw, if it has continued to discriminate in defiance of the Court’s order, then its case is indistinguishable from that of Bob Jones U. In that case, President Trump’s suggestion is well-founded, and its tax-exempt status could be, and should be, revoked by the IRS.

And, finally, of course, Harvard is one of many. There aren’t actually a great number of institutions of higher education that are selective, but of those, a large majority have engaged in race discrimination for many years. Trump’s warning should apply not just to Harvard, but to all of them.

https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2025/04/harvard-meet-bob-jones.php