The Ivy League university declined to 'surrender' to the letter's demands, prompting an escalating series of attacks by the US president Harvard University was told by an unidentified official on US President Donald Trump's antisemitism task force that a letter of demands had been sent to the university without authorisation,

While the contents of the letter were confirmed to be authentic, sources told the NYT that there was confusion within the Trump administration about how and why it was sent.

Harvard would have needed to change its admissions practices, stop DEI programming and policy measures, and change its hiring strategy.