University's refusal to bow to demands could be turning point in battle for education

J Michael Luttig, a conservative-leaning former judge, called Harvard's pushback of 'momentous significance'

- Robert Tait

It might come to be seen as the moment the "woke liberal empire" of Donald Trump's most fevered imaginings struck back.

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 stuffed.

That, in shorthand, is a summary of the exchange of letters between three Trump officials and Harvard's president, Alan Garber, that may in time be seen as something of a turning point in relations between the administration and academia.

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 after an upsurge of pro-Palestinian demonstrations gripped Harvard and other institutions in the wake of Hamas's 7 October attack 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.