This Election Could Hurt Harvard. Vote to Stop It.

No matter your politics, if you love America, you should think of Harvard this election day.

Though Harvard is not perfect, it undeniably contributes enormous good to society. Historically, society reciprocated by exempting Harvard from taxation. Now that extremist political forces — on both sides of the aisle — are threatening Harvard with crippling taxation, voters should take note of where candidates stand when heading to the polls.

In 2017 a Republican tax reform imposed a 1.4 percent tax on Harvard’s endowment income.

And since then, proposals have only gotten worse. Senator J.D. Vance (R-Ohio), the Republican Vice Presidential nominee, put forth a bill in the U.S. Senate late last year, hiking that 1.4 percent tax to 35 percent. His bill was ultimately blocked by Senate Democrats.

And earlier this year, Massachusetts Democrats proposed a 2.5 percent excise tax on the total value of Harvard’s endowment. Simple math — noting the University in a typical year distributes from the endowment to its budget about 5 percent of the endowment’s value — reveals these politicians are threatening to seize roughly half of Harvard’s endowment income.

Both sides have signaled that they wish to use Harvard’s endowment as a politically expedient piggy bank to pay for radical populist reforms.

Democratic State Representative Natalie M. Higgins, a co-sponsor of the Massachusetts bill, framed the tax as “redirecting this money, just to make sure that every single person in the Commonwealth has the opportunity to get a college education.”

Vance on the Senate floor suggested that the tax could pay for student loan relief and said since “universities cause the problem … they ought to pay for it.”

I have no doubt that this classic chicken-for-every-pot rhetoric plays well, but this populism is not only impractical far-left and far-right extremism; it is also dangerous.

Politicians began with 1.4 percent. Now they are suggesting taxes of roughly a third to a half of endowment income. Moreover, since one proposal emanates from the state level and the other from the federal government, Harvard could plausibly be subject to both — which together would seize nearly all the income from the endowment.

These increasingly large taxes, which could conceivably grow in time, threaten to destroy Harvard in its current form.

It was never serious political thought — on either end of the political spectrum — to target private university endowments as a piggy-bank to pay for anything — never mind big government handouts. This is because liberals and conservatives alike appreciate the value Harvard creates for America.

Harvard produces groundbreaking research in fields ranging from artificial intelligence to medicine. Great American leaders in nearly every sector were educated here. And a Harvard education is an invaluable opportunity for students from modest backgrounds that enables social mobility based on merit and excellence.

If Harvard and its peers are bankrupted by excessive taxation, it is unlikely that such excellence in scholarship will simply migrate unharmed to whatever public institutions populist politicians have in mind.

A far more likely outcome is that American universities will no longer lead the world. After all, in a regime of endowment taxes America’s best universities will be long gone.

It is not only vital to our national security, but essential to the ongoing project of democracy that great American universities such as Harvard continue to lead in research — especially in fields of critical national security interest, such as artificial intelligence — and promote free academic inquiry and exchange of ideas.

Furthermore, the populist endowment tax proposals are actually counterproductive to expanding opportunity, most especially for students from modest or disadvantaged backgrounds.

Research indicates that attending Harvard gives students a substantially better chance of breaking into the top one percent of the income distribution — and these graduates are disproportionately more likely to achieve great professional success.

In this sense, Harvard is a gateway to opportunity. And ironically, these opportunities are only available to Harvard students from modest backgrounds because of financial aid — supported largely by the endowment. Vance’s proposal and remarks seem to ignore the reality that a majority of Harvard undergraduates receive financial aid, almost a quarter pay nothing, and most graduate debt-free with only 3 percent taking on federal student debt.

And even if legislators decide to pour all the endowment tax revenue they can squeeze out of universities back into education, there is something special about Harvard and its peers that the government will not be able to replicate at scale. These taxes will therefore destroy the absolute best opportunity for young people of modest means to become leaders in American society.

If you care about America, reject populist extremism and favor sensible policies — liberal or conservative. Think of Harvard when you vote.

Ian M. Moore ’26, a Crimson Editorial editor, is an Applied Mathematics concentrator in Quincy House.