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To the Trump Administration:

Here are my midterm comments on your “extortion” project, on which you have been working for months with few results. Honoring your concerns with lax grading, I will not sugar-coat my evaluation: you are failing higher education policy. I suggest you drop the project — and your involvement with higher education — immediately.

To review: You proposed operational changes at Harvard, many of which would cede ideological control to you, in exchange for maintaining (semi-)normal relationships between Harvard and the federal government. You planned to apply extortionate pressure by withholding federal research grants, threatening international student enrollment, launching baseless civil rights investigations, and otherwise disrupting our research, teaching, and learning.

I warned that your plan was unethical and needlessly destructive. However, Harvard’s (and my own) commitment to viewpoint diversity compel me to treat the moral content of your project neutrally. My comments thus do not dwell on your ethical failures but on your procedural incompetence. (Who would have anticipated such shoddy negotiating tactics from the author of “The Art of the Deal”?)

You may ask, what do you know about extortion? A fair question. Ten months ago, my answer would have been: nothing. But having watched your sloppy, haphazard implementation of this nefarious plan, I find that I know a few things about extortion after all.

Let’s review some of the basic mistakes you’ve made extorting Harvard University:

First, you asked for everything right away. A cardinal rule of negotiation: give yourself room to negotiate. In normal deal-making, this means asking for more than you want, so you can make concessions while still realizing your goals. Extortion is slightly different: first, win small concessions; then, having normalized compliance, ask for more. You seem to have demanded everything at the outset, thus all but guaranteeing immediate opposition.

Second, you created solidarity on campus. Internal campus divisions were widespread prior to your attacks. But your decision to withhold federal grants and threaten our international students and faculty demonstrated clearly that your administration posed a grave threat to all of Harvard. While differences undoubtedly persist on campus, most of the Harvard community now recognizes your extortionate assault for what it is.

Third, you publicly and repeatedly claim a deal is imminent. Extortion demands secrecy. Drawing public attention to extortion encourages solidarity with your would-be victim — as Harvard’s allies have demonstrated through their financial, moral, and legal support for the University. Moreover, no deal is done until the deal is done. Every time you fail to close a deal, your credibility suffers further.

Fourth, you move the goalposts. When you announce Harvard will pay $500 million, and then cut a deal with Brown for $50 million, Harvard gets cold feet. (Whatever our other flaws, we still know 500 is greater than 50.) Furthermore, every time you publicly announce new terms for Harvard, you demonstrate that you cannot be trusted to abide by the terms of any deal and that your negotiators do not represent you with full knowledge and authority.

Fifth, you let the legal system get involved. Extortion is about power, not law. Because you chose to withhold lawfully appropriated federal funds, you opened your threats up to legal scrutiny — a mistake of which Harvard and the American Association of University Professors took full advantage. Unsurprisingly, the court found that your actions lacked a factual basis and flagrantly violated administrative law. Now you’ve lost both your rationale for extorting Harvard and your strongest bargaining chip: the money you withheld.

Sixth, your other failed extortionate projects are teaching your would-be victims how to resist. True, you have successfully extorted prestigious law firms, some universities, major players in corporate America, and media conglomerates. But while your blitzkrieg against civil society has overwhelmed our most craven, materialistic institutions and their hollow leadership class, each failed extortion reminds other institutions and ordinary citizens that they can fight and win.

That is why most universities greeted your new carrot-based project — offering priority access to federal funds if universities agree to sacrifice their values to your whims — with a firm “No.” Such robust resistance gains resolve from your failures, including at Harvard.

To summarize: the way you have executed your extortion scheme has been an utter embarrassment. Your unrelenting ignorance, malice, and bad faith have severely hampered your work.

Ordinarily, you could drop this course, but I hear that you are also failing Economics, Global Health, Law, and Ethics. (You would be failing Ethics even under our previous, lenient grading standards.) It would be best for all involved, including Harvard, if you simply withdrew.

Derek Miller is a professor of English at Harvard.