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Republican senator Tom Cotton of Arkansas wants to levy a 6 percent tax on 10 universities’ endowments to support Israel and Ukraine and fund border security efforts.
The one-time tax, proposed Tuesday as part of the Woke Endowment Security Tax Act, would raise about $15.47 billion, according to a news release from Cotton’s office.
According to the release, the 10 universities subject to the tax would be: Columbia University, Cornell University, Harvard University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Northwestern University, the University of Pennsylvania, Princeton University, Stanford University, Washington University in St. Louis and Yale University.
The bill doesn’t list the specific institutions but creates two groups to levy the tax against, according to the news release. Those groups are secular institutions with endowments of at least $12.2 billion and secular institutions with endowments of at least $9 billion that also operate a “state contract college” as subject to the tax. The latter category seems aimed at Cornell, a private institution with contract colleges and schools that were created by New York lawmakers and receive state funds. The legislation would use the 2022 value of endowments to determine which universities would be taxed.
Private colleges with endowments larger than $500,000 in assets per student already pay a 1.4 percent tax on net investment income.
Cotton’s proposal comes as top university leaders are under fire for their responses to campus antisemitism and student protests in support of the Palestinian people.
“Many of America’s so-called ‘top’ universities are failing to condemn antisemitism and violence against Jewish students on their campuses,” Cotton said in a statement. “We should levy this tax on these schools’ endowments. A tax on the billions of dollars these schools have amassed would be more than enough to pay for our aid to Israel or security for the southern border.”
