US President Donald Trump called Harvard a "joke" Wednesday and said it should lose its government research contracts after the top university refused demands that it accept outside political supervision.
Trump's administration had also formally asked the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) to revoke the famed seat of learning's tax-exempt status, US media reported, a day after the president first made the threat.
"Harvard can no longer be considered even a decent place of learning, and should not be considered on any list of the World's Great Universities or Colleges," Trump said on his Truth Social platform.
"Harvard is a JOKE, teaches Hate and Stupidity, and should no longer receive Federal Funds."
Trump is furious at the storied university -- which has produced 162 Nobel prize winners -- for rejecting his demand to submit to government supervision on admissions, hiring and political slant.
Other institutions, including Columbia University, have bowed to less far-ranging demands from the Trump administration, which claims that the educational elite is too left-wing.
Harvard flatly rejected the pressure, with its president, Alan Garber, saying that the university refuses to "negotiate over its independence or its constitutional rights."
- Tax exemption -
Trump this week ordered the freezing of $2.2 billion in federal funding to Harvard, a global research powerhouse.
He also said on Tuesday that Harvard "should lose its Tax Exempt Status" as a nonprofit educational institution if it did not back down.
CNN and the Washington Post reported on Wednesday that the IRS tax bureau was now making plans to do so following a request from Trump.
White House Deputy Press Secretary Harrison Fields told AFP by email that "any forthcoming actions by the IRS will be conducted independently of the President."
He added that "investigations into any institution's violations of its tax status were initiated prior to" Trump's post on Truth Social.
The Republican's war against the intellectual elite is echoed in similar, unprecedented pressure campaigns against top law firms and big media groups, including the Associated Press.
Demonstrating the broadening resonance of the row, Golden State Warriors basketball coach Steve Kerr spoke out in support of Harvard after his team defeated the Memphis Grizzlies.
Kerr, sporting a Harvard T-shirt, called the demands on the university the "dumbest thing I've ever heard" and citing his support for "academic freedom."
- Government seeks control -
The payments frozen to Harvard are for government contracts with its leading research programs, mostly in the medical fields where the school's laboratories are critical players in the development of new medicines and treatments.
Trump and his White House team have publicly justified their campaign against universities as a reaction to what they say is uncontrolled anti-Semitism and a need to reverse diversity programs aimed at encouraging minorities.
The anti-Semitism allegations are based on controversy over protests against Israel's war in Gaza that swept across US college campuses last year.
Columbia University in New York -- an epicenter of the protests -- stood down last month and agreed to oversight of its Middle Eastern studies department after being threatened with a loss of $400 million in federal funds.
The claims about diversity tap into long-standing conservative complaints that US university campuses are too liberal, shutting out right-wing voices and giving preference to Black and other minority groups over whites.
In the case of Harvard, the White House is seeking unprecedented levels of government control over the inner workings of the country's oldest and wealthiest university -- and one of the most respected educational and research institutions in the world.
In a letter sent to Harvard, the administration's demands included:
- ending admissions that take into account the student's race or national origins
- preventing admission of foreign students "hostile to the American values and institutions"
- ending staff hiring based on race, religion, sex or national origin
- reducing the power of students in campus governance
- auditing students and staff for "viewpoint diversity"
- reforming entire programs for "egregious records of anti-Semitism or other bias"
- cracking down on campus protests
