In May 2025, a screenshot of a letter from Linda McMahon to the president of an American university circulated in the media and social networks. It was full of notes about mistakes made by the official - supposedly Harvard representatives so ironically hinted that the education of the official herself left much to be desired. We have verified the authenticity of this screenshot.

As reported in publications, US Secretary of Education Linda McMahon sent a letter to Harvard University President Alan Garber in which she called the university a laughingstock of the American higher education system and accused its leadership of systemic errors and violations. McMahon warned that the school would not receive financial assistance from the federal government if it did not meet its requirements.

In response, Harvard representatives allegedly edited the letter in teaching style and published it on social networks. It highlights dozens of mistakes made by the Minister of Education, including incorrect use of capital letters, some words and punctuation marks.

The news was spread in Russian "Anticorrosive", "Focus", Post.factum, Kursiv Media and a number of other media, and posts in Facebook, Instagram, Threads and other social networks received hundreds of reposts and thousands of likes. Many referred to a certain publication in the Daily Mail.

The conflict between the administration of US President Donald Trump and the leadership of Harvard University was provoked by events held on campus in 2023–2024 protests against Israel's military operation in the Gaza Strip. Against the backdrop of a scandal due to accusations of Harvard leadership of insufficiently combating anti-Semitism, then-president of the university Claudine Gay, also convicted of plagiarism, resigned.

April 16, 2025 Trump statedthat Harvard University should be deprived of federal funding because "it teaches hatred and stupidity" and "hires almost exclusively crippled, radical-left idiots and idiots.” The US Presidential Administration presented the university with a number of requirements for an “amnesty” that included the cancellation of all DEI (diversity, equity, inclusion) programs and a ban on wearing masks on campuses. Harvard President Alan Garber announced that he would not comply with Washington's demands, and after freezing part of the funding in the amount of $2.2 billion filed a lawsuit to court.

There is no doubt about the existence of the letter that McMahon sent to Harvard - on May 6, the official posted him on his page on the social network X. In an address to university president Garber, the minister reports that the university allegedly violates federal law and ethical standards by accepting foreign students who are not prepared to comply with US laws and promoting racial inequality. This explains McMahon's decision to cancel grants to Harvard.

Soon on social networks spread screenshots of an eloquent response allegedly prepared by Harvard representatives. They allegedly noted numerous errors in the letter they had received earlier and published it in this form.

This, as correctly reported in some verified publications, was written by a British tabloid Daily Mail. However, attentive readers may have noticed that the newspaper writes about “several different” versions of the letter with edits. Indeed, there are at least two popular versions.

"Checked" did not find a single corrected version of McMahon's letter to website Harvard University and on its verified pages in Facebook, X, Instagram, TikTok And LinkedIn. There are none in personal blog Alan Garber in X.

As an analysis of social networks shows, a wave of ridicule for McMahon’s mistakes was raised by X users who published their own screenshots with corrections. On the morning of May 6 at 08:16 Moscow time, the option shown above with marks on a white background posted MIT graduate student Daniel Luo (@danielluo_pi). He accompanied the pictures with the caption “Our Minister of Education.” At the same time, Luo did not claim that the edits were made by employees of Harvard University, which he directly stated in subsequent comments. According to him words, it was a humorous publication, and some of his professional economic jokes remained in the screenshot unappreciated. In a conversation with AFP fact checkers, Luo once again confirmed his authorship and expressed surprise at the viral popularity of his post (21 million views at the time of writing this analysis).

As for the version of the edits on a darker background, also presented above, it is an hour and a half after Luo published journalist BJ Bethel, indicating his authorship. This option did not become so viral, but it was the screenshots of which were posted by the Daily Mail, and after it the error was picked up by some Russian-language media.

Thus, Harvard University, in response to Linda McMahon’s letter, did not post any screenshots with edits on social networks. Errors in the letter of the American official were found by X users, but subsequently their publications began to be distributed with incorrect comments.

Cover photo: social networks