Education Secretary Linda McMahon sent a threatening letter to Harvard that was widely mocked for its embarrassing grammatical mistakes.
McMahon sent the letter to Harvard’s president Dr. Alan Garber on Monday warning the school will not receive money from the federal government until they fall in line with Trump’s demands.
But the letter was swiftly lambasted by social media critics who noticed a slew of mistakes made by the woman in charge of helping dismantle the Education Department.
Harvard even edited the letter professor-style and sent it back to McMahon with the errors noted in red pen, according to a few posts made to X with a picture of the marked-up three pages.
‘Harvard is engaging in a systemic (sic) pattern of violating federal law,’ McMahon wrote in her letter, which both the university and others who edited the letter noted was likely meant to say ‘systematic.’
‘Where do many of these ‘students’ come from, who are they, how do they get into Harvard, or even into our country—and why is there so much HATE?’ Secretary McMahon continued in the opening paragraph.
Education Secretary Linda McMahon was excoriated on social media when critics marked-up and red-lined her mistake-ridden letter to Harvard
A few different versions began circulating social media with professor-style red pen editing of McMahon’s letter to Harvard threatening to pull federal grants
The notes call out randomly capitalized letters, run-on and incomplete sentences and even improper use of words and punctuation
The letter goes on to mock Harvard’s educational standards, despite McMahon’s own mistakes. She goes after the Ivy League for the teaching of ‘remedial math’ and calls attention to plagiarism scandals at the school.
White House correspondent Andrew Feinberg with the Independent wrote on X of the letter: ‘Whoever wrote this is barely literate.’
Another reporter questioned if it was written by Artificial Intelligence (AI).
An official previewed the action on a Monday night call before McMahon posted the letter on social media.
‘For Harvard to become eligible for those competitions again, it would have to enter into a negotiation with the government to satisfy what the government says is in compliance with all federal laws,’ the official said.
Research grants would be impacted by this action – but not federal student aid, which funnels through universities before going to students and providing them with financial relief.
Social media users said that Harvard ‘won’ this round of the war with the administration because of the numerous mistakes in the letter.
Right off the bat, McMahon wrote ‘Federal Government,’ which critics said was improper because she capitalized the letters ‘F’ and ‘G’ when it is not a proper noun.
One version, social media users claim, was marked-up and sent back to McMahon by Harvard – leading them to dub the Ivy League the winner of this round of the war with the Trump administration
The other mark-ups include noting run-on and incomplete sentences, inconsistent tensing and randomly capitalized words.
Trump has voiced displeasure with universities allowing pro-Palestinian demonstrations to run amok on campuses.
Officials within the president’s team have also taken issue with what they consider to be lack of diversity in higher education – with too few conservatives on staff.
‘They have become monolithically leftist and that DEI ideology connects to the anti-Semitism problem because they’re teaching young people to make snap judgments about each other based on identity and skin color,’ the senior official said.
The latest move represents a major escalation in a months-long war against the prominent institution.
Trump previously froze $2.2 billion in federal grants to Harvard and said he’s looking into stripping the Ivy of its tax-exempt status.
A Department of Education official said in Monday’s call that Harvard’s endowment is ‘virtually untaxed’ and ‘massive.’
‘It’s larger than the GDP of many countries and it was only possible for them to amass that thanks to the blessings of this country that they do business in,’ the official said.
Garber has previously said he won’t bend to the government.
The university sued last month to overturn the funding freeze, pushing back against the government’s ‘sweeping and intrusive demands.’
In the letter, released on White House officials’ social media accounts, McMahon said that receiving taxpayer funds was a ‘privilege, not a right’ and claimed that Harvard was breaking federal law.
The letter started out by focusing on the immigration status of students – likely those involved in the pro-Palestinian demonstrations – with McMahon saying they were engaged in ‘violent behavior.’
