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,

An official on the administration’s antisemitism task force told the university that a letter of demands had been sent without authorization.

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.