Letter that set off Trump-Harvard war was 'unauthorised', sent by mistake: Report

The letter which set off the tussle between Harvard and US President Donald Trump's administration was “unauthorised” and “sent by mistake,” an official close to the matter revealed. On April 11, the prestigious American university received an email from the Trump administration that included a series of demands regarding hiring, admissions and curriculum.

Some of these demands were so onerous that Harvard officials had to take on the White House and contest the demands. The protest from the university set off a tectonic battle between Harvard and Trump himself .

However, two people familiar with the email told The New York Times that the mail from the White House’s task force on antisemitism should not have been sent and was “unauthorised”. It is pertinent to note that the controversial letter was sent by the acting general counsel of the Department of Health and Human Services, Sean Keveney, a member of the antisemitism task force.

More from United States Of America

Now Trump to cut $1 billion more from Harvard: Can university survive this fight? Trump vs Harvard: How the fight started, where it is heading

The letter debacle

The official told the NYT that it is unclear what prompted the letter to be sent last Friday. However, there are different accounts within the Trump administration over how the matter was mishandled. As per the report, some people at the White House believed that the letter was sent prematurely, according to the three people, who requested to remain anonymous.

Meanwhile, others in the administration thought that it was meant to be circulated among the task force members rather than sent to Harvard. However, the letter came at a time when Harvard was in talks with the task force established by Trump. The letter took the university by surprise, and Harvard eventually concluded that a deal between the two entities would “ultimately be impossible,” NYT reported.

A senior White House official said that the administration eventually decided to stand by the letter and blamed Harvard for not continuing discussions. “It was malpractice on the side of Harvard’s lawyers not to pick up the phone and call the members of the antisemitism task force whom they had been talking to for weeks,” said May Mailman, the White House senior policy strategist. “Instead, Harvard went on a victimhood campaign.”

Impact Shorts

More Shorts

As Trump weaponises tariff, Fed sees a bigger worry: Not jobs, but rising prices in America

Despite a backdown deal, Trump deploys hundreds more National Guard troops in Washington DC

Despite the whole drama , Mailman still believes that there is a potential pathway to resume discussions if the university, among other measures, follows through on what Trump wants and apologises to its “students for fostering a campus where there was antisemitism.”

“The task force and the entire Trump administration are in lockstep on ensuring that entities that receive taxpayer dollars are following all civil rights laws," a spokesman for the antisemitism task force said in a statement.  Harvard later pushed back on the White House’s assertion that it should have checked with the administration’s lawyers before going public.

The letter “was signed by three federal officials, placed on official letterhead, was sent from the email inbox of a senior federal official and was sent on April 11 as promised,” Harvard said in a statement on Friday. “Recipients of such correspondence from the US 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 meant to do and say. But even if the letter was a mistake, the actions the government took this week have real-life consequences” on students and employees and “the standing of American higher education in the world," the university added.

The letter left Harvard shocked

For the last two weeks, Harvard’s lawyers, William Burck and Robert Hur, were communicating with representatives from the Trump administration: Josh Gruenbaum, a top official at the General Services Administration; Thomas Wheeler, the acting general counsel for the Department of Education; and Keveney.

During the back and forth, both Burck and Hur were expecting a letter from the task force. However, they were shocked when the letter finally arrived. On Monday, Harvard publicly said that it could not accede to them, and soon after the statement was released, Harvard’s lawyers received calls from Gruenbaum.

In the call, Gruenbaum initially admitted that he and Wheeler did not authorise sending the latter. However, he changed his story quickly and maintained that the letter was supposed to be sent at some point, just not on Friday when the dialogue between the two sides was still constructive, a source told the NYT.

The clarification came a little too late, since the battle broke out between the university and the Trump administration shortly after Harvard publically rejected the demands from the task force. In response to Harvard’s decision to fight, the White House announced that the POTUS was freezing $2.2 billion in grants to the school. Within a day, he was threatening to revoke Harvard’s tax-exempt status .