DJT Officials Backpedal that Letter Igniting Conflict with Harvard was Sent by Mistake

Officials in Donald Trump’s regime backpedaled, claiming the letter that ignited a showdown with Harvard University was sent by mistake.

It is unclear whether the mistake was premature mailing, or releasing it when it was intended for internal use, although it is not laid out like an internal discussion document.

The letter was sent by Acting General Counsel of the Department of Health and Human Services Sean Keveney. It ordered Harvard to radically change the way it operates, including among other demands that it must monitor and report the opinions of faculty and students in a chilling shutdown of traditional academic freedom. The content of the letter has been confirmed as authentic.

The letter arrived after two weeks of discussions between Harvard and officials in Donald Trump’s antisemitism task force. Harvard hoped to reach a reasonable agreement. The letter made such broad and extreme demands that Harvard concluded the discussions were likely to fail.

After Harvard rejected the demands, Trump’s regime rapidly escalated. It just a couple of days it:

• cancelled $2.2 billion in grants, $60 million in federal contracts, and then another $2.7 million in grants for violence prevention
• threatened an extremely abnormal quick termination of Harvard’s tax-exempt status, at the direct instruction of Trump to the Internal Revenue Service rather than through normal procedures
• threatened to revoke Harvard’s permission to host international students who hold F-1 visas

Harvard stood its ground, promising to fight. Its donors sent a surge of extra donations to it. Harvard has the largest endowment of any university in the country, valued at about $53 billion last year.

Harvard’s resistance to federal attempts to strongarm it prompted acceleration in efforts by other universities across the country to form Mutual Academic Defense Compacts, NATO-like alliances in which all members of a MADC will step up to defend any member attacked by the regime.

In the face of this, the regime tried to deflect responsibility by suggesting Harvard should have verified the letter before responding to it. Harvard replied:

The letter was signed by three federal officials, placed on official letterhead, was sent from the email inbox [sic] of a senior federal official and was sent on April 11 as promised. Recipients of such correspondence from the U.S. government—even when it contains sweeping demands that are astonishing in their overreach—do not question its authenticity or seriousness.

It remains unclear to us exactly what, among the government’s recent words and deeds, were mistakes or what the government actually meant to do and say. But even if the letter was a mistake, the actions the government took this week have real consequences.

Harvard did not budge.

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