Harvard on Monday rejected numerous demands from the administration of US President Donald Trump.
This was as the administration said it would cede control of the school to a conservative government that portrays universities as dangerously leftist.
After a few hours of Harvard taking its stand, Trump's administration announced that it was freezing $2.3 billion in federal funding to the school.
This comes after the Trump's administration said last month that it was reviewing $9 billion in federal contracts and grants to Harvard as part of a crackdown on what it says is antisemitism that erupted on college campuses during pro-Palestinian protests in the past 18 months.
A Department of Education task force on combating antisemitism, on Monday accused America's oldest university of having a troubling entitlement mindset that is endemic in the nation's most prestigious universities and colleges, that federal investment does not come with the responsibility to uphold civil rights laws.
The exchange resulted to the high-stakes dispute between the Trump administration and some of the world's richest universities that has raised concerns about speech and academic freedoms.
The administration has frozen hundreds of millions of dollars in federal funding for numerous universities, pressing the institutions to make policy changes and citing what it says is a failure to fight antisemitism on campus.
Harvard President Alan Garber wrote in a public letter on Monday that demands made by the Department of Education last week would allow the federal government to control the Harvard community and threaten the school's values as a private institution devoted to the pursuit, production, and dissemination of knowledge.
“No government – regardless of which party is in power – should dictate what private universities can teach, whom they can admit and hire, and which areas of study and inquiry they can pursue,” Garber wrote.
