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It would be a good start to remove their tax exempt status, sure. Seizing the money sounds bad, but this is not money that rightfully belongs to an individual proscribed by a capricious state, it’s from a heavily-subsidized institution that in theory performs government-like functions. It could be seen as just correcting some accounting mistake in the financing of government goals, or as making them pay some tax arrears, or inheritance tax.
You’re a reasonable guy, Ben. Maybe you can tell me what the obvious, very good reasons against a 1%/y wealth tax is. All I ever hear is that taxes are bad, which okay fair enough, but that’s not specific, and liquidity problems, which I don’t find convincing. If you can’t cough up 1%, you’re either incompetent or bankrupt, and you shouldn’t be holding assets.
That’s an argument from laziness, tainted with status quo bias. You want to fund science, fund it. There's no reason to delegate this power to universities, when it's clear their goals can very much diverge from the societally beneficial one. It's spelled out in the OP: they almost used the money society granted them to fight a titanic legal battle against the government for partisan reasons.
Your other argument is that since any one person or institution cannot fund all of USG, they shouldn’t be taxed.
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