Harvard University has chosen battle with the Trump administration.

Harvard became the first university on Monday to openly reject the administration's demands to change its policies, leading the federal government to pause $2 billion in contracts with the Ivy League school and President Trump to threaten its tax-exempt status.

The higher education world will watch closely as the nation's oldest and richest school almost certainly takes the federal government to court even as the administration looks for more ways to raise the pressure against the school and others it has accused of failing to protect their students from antisemitism.

"It seems like Harvard is clearly taking a stand. My assumption here is that they're going to try to pursue some sort of legal action like a lawsuit to defend their funding and, basically, their independence as an institution," said Veronica Goodman, interim team lead for higher education policy at the Center for American Progress.

"I hope that other institutions of higher education sort of band together with each other in a strength [in] numbers approach to this bullying," Goodman added.

The university's lawyers sent a letter to the administration on Monday rejecting a........

© The Hill