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 a extortive demand from the administration that it surrender the core of its academic freedoms – and promptly told it to get lost. 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...