Trump Officials Blame Mistake for Setting Off Confrontation with Harvard

>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.

(see letter here: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2025/04/14/us/trump-harv...)

This sounds like a major case of the left hand not knowing what the right hand is doing, but now the administration is trying to deflect their blame for the screwup by insisting it was Harvard's fault that they took the letter at face value (letter was on official letterhead, signed by three officials, etc):

>“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.”

> 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.