Thinking Citizen Blog — Harvard’s Tax-Exempt Status — The Case of Bob Jones University v US (1983), Decided 8 To 1
Thinking Citizen Blog — Friday is Education and Education Policy Day
Today’s Topic: Harvard’s Tax-Exempt Status — the case of Bob Jones University v US (1983), decided 8 to 1
In 1983, in the case of Bob Jones v US, the US Supreme Court ruled that “the religion clauses of the First Amendment did not prohibit the Internal Revenue Service from revoking the tax exempt status of a religious university whose practices are contrary to a compelling public policy, such as a eradicating racial discrimination.” The case involved the University’s ban on interracial dating. The sole dissenter was William H. Rehnquist who would become chief justice from 1986 until his death in 2005.
Today, a few excerpts from a Boston Globe article on the Bob Jones case. Plus a few more notes on Bob Jones University and the consequences of a loss of tax-exempt status for Harvard.
Experts — please chime in. Correct, elaborate, elucidate.
“IF HARVARD LOSES ITS TAX-EXEMPT STATUS AS PRESIDENT TRUMP HAS THREATENED, IT WOULD BE EXTREMELY RARE BUT NOT UNPRECEDENTED” (Boston Globe)
1. “In 1976, the Internal Revenue Service stripped the tax exemption from Bob Jones University, a private fundamentalist Christian institution in Greenville, SC, because the school forbade interracial dating by its students.”
2. “The university objected, saying it wasn’t practicing racial discrimination because the policy applied to all students.”
DID BOB JONES UNIVERSITY EVER REGAIN ITS TAX-EXEMPT STATUS? YES. (below Bob Jones, Sr. the founder of Bob Jones University, who was an early radio preacher and a friend of William Jennings Bryan)
1. “Bob Jones University continued on for decades without the tax exemption, finding ways to mitigate it by, for example, spinning off its museum as a separate organization that was eligible for an exemption.”
2. “In 2000, the university ended its ban on interracial dating after new light was shed on it following a controversial campaign stop there by Republican presidential candidate George W. Bush.”
3. “In 2008, the university publicly apologized for its racist policies and in 2017 it regained its federal tax-exempt status.”
WHAT WOULD LOSS OF TAX EXEMPT STATUS MEAN FOR HARVARD? (New York Times)
1. Reduction in financial aid for students.
2. Abandonment of important medical research.
3. “Loss of other opportunities for innovation.”
NB: “Bloomberg News estimated in an analysis that Harvard’s tax benefits totaled. at least $465 million in 2023. The university also indirectly benefits from the tax deduction that its donors receive from making contributions. In the 2024 fiscal year, Harvard reported that it had collected more than $525 million in donations that could be used immediately.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bob_Jones_University_v._United_States
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bob_Jones_University
Why Does Harvard Have Tax-Exempt Status and Can the IRS Revoke It? What to Know.
QUOTE OF THE MONTH
“Make your own Bible. Select and collect all the words and sentences that in all your readings have been to you like the blast of a trumpet.”
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
My spin — then periodically review, re-rank, and exchange your list with those you love. I call this the “Orion Exchange” because seven is about as many as any human can digest at a time. Game?
LAST FOUR YEARS OF POSTS ORGANIZED THEMATICALLY
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1IP5ATbqCWPv0WKC4dCDgAiidbFVOaqR_
#1 A graphic guide to justice (9 metaphors on one page).
#2 “39 Songs, Prayers, and Poems: the Keys to the Hearts of Seven Billion People” — Adams House Senior Common Room Presentation, (11/17/20)
NB: Palestine Orion (Decision) — let’s exchange Orions, let’s find Rumi’s field (“Beyond all ideas of right and wrong, there is a field. Meet me there” Rumi, 13 century Persian Sufi mystic)
YOUR TURN
Please share the coolest thing you learned in the last week related to education or education policy. Or the coolest thought however half-baked you had.
Or the coolest, most important thing you learned in your life related to education or education policy that the rest of us may have missed.
Or just some random education-related fact that blew you away.
This is your chance to make someone’s day. Or to cement in your own mind something that you might otherwise forget. Or to think more deeply than otherwise about something that is dear to your heart.
