Trump admin letter to Harvard sent in error, sparking battle (2025)

A letter from Trump administration officials sent to Harvard University on April 11 outlined demands so draconian that university officials decided they had no choice but to resist, according to a New York Times report.

Harvard President Alan Garber’s announcement on Monday that he would not yield to the demands ignited a historic battle between the prestigious college and President Donald Trump.

It turns out the letter from the White House’s task force on antisemitism was sent by mistake, according to the Times.

A Trump administration official contacted Harvard after its Monday announcement to say the letter had been sent in error, two Trump officials told the Times.

• Read more: Is Harvard’s resistance to Trump igniting a broader movement across higher ed?

Three other administration officials told the Times that it is unclear what prompted the letter or how it was mishandled. “Some people at the White House believed it had been sent prematurely,” according to three people who requested anonymity, the Times reported.

Acting general counsel of the Department of Health and Human Services, Sean Keveney, sent the letter, according to the three people, who were briefed on the matter, according to the Times. Keveney is a member of the antisemitism task force.

The letter arrived as Harvard and members of the task force were engaged in talks over the previous two weeks. However, demands in the letter, including government audits of professor and student viewpoints and giving leadership power to those “most devoted” to enacting the changes in the letter, were so extreme that Garber concluded a deal was not possible, according to the Times.

• Read more: Trump admin demands Harvard provide records of international student ‘illegal activities’

After Garber announced he would not comply with the demands, the Trump administration responded by freezing billions in federal funding and is threatening to take away Harvard’s tax-exempt status.

A White House official stood by the letter, the Times reported, “calling the university’s decision to publicly rebuff the administration overblown and blaming Harvard for not continuing discussions.”

May Mailman, the White House senior policy strategist, told the Times, there is a pathway to resume discussions “if the university, among other measures, follows through on what Mr. Trump wants and apologizes to its students for fostering a campus where there was antisemitism.”

• Read more: Why Harvard was willing to risk $9B to fight Trump

Harvard officials pushed back on the claim that they should have checked with Trump administration lawyers after receiving the letter.

“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 to the Times on Friday. “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."

The statement added: “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-life consequences” on students and employees and “the standing of American higher education in the world.”