Harvard University, the world-renowned institution emblematic of the elitism that Trump and his coterie hold in contempt, received an extortive demand from the administration that it surrender the core of its academic freedoms – and promptly told it to get lost.

Echoing pressures imposed on other elite colleges, notably Columbia University, the Trump team – representing the Departments of Education and Health and Human Services, and the General Services Administration – had demanded sweeping reforms in how Harvard is run, including the installation of viewpoint-diverse faculty members and the end of diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) programmes.

The backdrop to a demand for what would be unprecedented government interference in the affairs of the world’s richest university is the alleged rise of campus antisemitism, arising from an upsurge of pro-Palestinian demonstrations that have gripped Harvard and other colleges following Hamas’s 7 October 2023 attack on Israel and Israel’s retaliatory military offensive in Gaza.

Critics, however, see a more nefarious White House agenda – namely, gutting universities of what it sees as a liberal-left bias, while using antisemitism as a cudgel in an authoritarian power grab.

Having seen Columbia cave in to similar demands and threatening $9bn in federal funding, the White House may have thought it was on to a winner with Harvard.

“Investment is not an entitlement,” the administration’s 11 April letter read, accusing Harvard of having “failed to live up to both the intellectual and civil rights conditions that justify federal investment”.

The administration’s demands made “clear that the intention is not to work with us to address antisemitism in a cooperative and constructive manner”, Garber wrote.

“Although some of the demands outlined by the government are aimed at combating antisemitism, the majority represent direct governmental regulation of the ‘intellectual conditions’ at Harvard.

“No government – regardless of which party is in power – should dictate what private universities can teach, whom they can admit and hire, and which areas of study and inquiry they can pursue.”

The university’s lawyers, William Burck and Robert Hur, both of whom have conservative credentials, starkly set out the broader constitutional stakes, writing that the government’s demands were “in contravention of the first amendment” and concluding that “Harvard is not prepared to agree to demands that go beyond the lawful authority of this or any administration”.