President Donald Trump’s campaign to pressure elite universities into making a wide range of policy changes met its first major resistance when Harvard University sued the US government for freezing billions of dollars in federal funding.

The Trump administration will respond in court to Harvard University's lawsuit seeking to block a federal funding freeze imposed after the institution rejected a list of White House demands that it said would undermine its independence,

Harvard University sued the Trump administration Monday in a new escalation of the fight over institutional oversight, independence and federal funding for the Ivy League school.