Harvard University received an emailed letter from the Trump administration last Friday that included a series of demands about hiring, admissions and curriculum so onerous that school officials decided they had no choice but to take on the White House.
The university announced its intentions on Monday, setting off a tectonic battle between one of the country’s most prestigious universities and a U.S. president. Then, almost immediately, came a frantic call from a Trump official.
The April 11 letter from the White House’s task force on antisemitism, this official told Harvard, should not have been sent and was “unauthorized,” two people familiar with the matter said.
The letter was sent by the acting general counsel of the Department of Health and Human Services, Sean Keveney, according to three other people, who were briefed on the matter. Mr. Keveney is a member of the antisemitism task force.
It is unclear what prompted the letter to be sent last Friday. Its content was authentic, the three people said, but there were differing accounts inside the administration of how it had been mishandled. Some people at the White House believed it had been sent prematurely, according to the three people, who requested anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly about internal discussions. Others in the administration thought it had been meant to be circulated among the task force members rather than sent to Harvard.
But its timing was consequential. The letter arrived when Harvard officials believed they could still avert a confrontation with President Trump. Over the previous two weeks, Harvard and the task force had engaged in a dialogue. But the letter’s demands were so extreme that Harvard concluded that a deal would ultimately be impossible.
After Harvard publicly repudiated the demands, the Trump administration raised the pressure, freezing billions in federal funding to the school and warning that its tax-exempt status was in jeopardy.
A senior White House official said the administration stood by the letter, calling the university’s decision to publicly rebuff the administration overblown and blaming 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 who they had been talking to for weeks,” said May Mailman, the White House senior policy strategist. “Instead, Harvard went on a victimhood campaign.”
Still, Ms. Mailman said, there is a potential 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.
Mr. Keveney could not be reached for comment. In a statement, a spokesman for the antisemitism task force said, “The task force, and the entire Trump administration, is in lock step on ensuring that entities who receive taxpayer dollars are following all civil rights laws.”
Harvard pushed back on the White House’s claim that it should have checked with the 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 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.”
The letter shocked Harvard not only because of the nature of the demands but because it was sent when the university’s leadership and the lawyers it hired to deal with the administration thought they could head off a full-bore conflict with Mr. Trump.
For two weeks, Harvard’s lawyers, William Burck and Robert Hur, listened as Trump officials, in fairly broad strokes, laid out the administration’s concerns about how the school dealt with antisemitism and other issues.
On the administration’s side of this dialogue were three lawyers: Josh Gruenbaum, a top official at the General Services Administration; Thomas Wheeler, the acting general counsel for the Department of Education; and Mr. Keveney.
The back and forth lacked specifics on what the administration wanted Harvard to do. The Trump administration lawyers said they would send Harvard a letter last Friday that laid out more specifics.
By the end of the workday on Friday, the letter had not arrived. Instead, overnight, the lawyers from Harvard received a letter, sent from Mr. Keveney in an email, that was far different from the one the school had expected.
It listed a series of demands that would reshape student and academic life in ways Harvard could never agree to. On Monday, Harvard said publicly that it could not accede to them.
Shortly thereafter, Mr. Gruenbaum called one of Harvard’s lawyers, according two people with knowledge of the calls. At first he said he and Mr. Wheeler had not authorized the sending of the letter. Mr. Gruenbaum then slightly changed his story, saying the letter was supposed to be sent at some point, just not on Friday when the dialogue between the two sides was still constructive, one of the people said.
A lawyer for Columbia University received a similar call from Mr. Gruenbaum around the same time, two people with knowledge of the call said. He, Mr. Wheeler and Mr. Keveney had also been engaged with Columbia about changes the task force wanted that university to adopt, and Mr. Gruenbaum wanted the Columbia lawyer to know that the letter to Harvard was “unauthorized,” the two people with knowledge of the call said.
Mr. Gruenbaum did not respond to a message seeking comment.
Later Monday, Harvard’s corporation and senior leaders were briefed on Mr. Gruenbaum’s assertion that the letter should not have been sent. The briefing left many on Harvard’s side convinced that the letter had been a mistake, three people familiar with the matter said.
Harvard officials, including several who worked in government earlier in their careers, were shocked that such an important letter — bearing the logos of three government agencies, with signatures of three top officials at the bottom — could be sent by a mistake.
But at that point, there was no way for Harvard to undo what had already been set in motion. The university had already declared that it would rebuff the letter’s demands. And despite claiming that the letter should not have been sent, the Trump administration did not withdraw it.
In response to Harvard’s decision to fight, the White House announced that Mr. Trump was freezing $2.2 billion in grants to the school. Within a day, he was threatening to revoke Harvard’s tax-exempt status.
Maureen Farrell contributed reporting.
Michael S. Schmidt is an investigative reporter for The Times covering Washington. His work focuses on tracking and explaining high-profile federal investigations.
Michael C. Bender is a Times political correspondent covering Donald J. Trump, the Make America Great Again movement and other federal and state elections.
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