In a campus-wide message Monday, Harvard president Alan Garber vowed not to acquiesce to “unprecedented demands being made by the federal government to control the Harvard community.”

“The University will not surrender its independence or relinquish its constitutional rights,” Garber said.

Harvard’s stance is the most forceful pushback yet against the Trump administration’s crackdown on elite universities. It is a sharp contrast to the approach taken by Columbia University’s leaders who acquiesced to a list of demands from the Trump administration last month. Columbia promised to change student disciplinary procedures and place a Middle East studies department under new oversight, among other measures.

Tyler Coward, a lawyer with the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, a free speech advocacy group, described the administration’s tactics as unlawful abuses of government power, and praised Harvard’s response.

“We’ve been saying since this started that it’s going to take an institution standing up for its own rights to put an end to this,” he said. “Thankfully, Harvard chose a different course than Columbia and is asserting its rights to remain free from a hostile takeover from the federal government.”

Elise Stefanik, a Republican congresswoman who helped launch a congressional investigation into Harvard’s response to antisemitism, condemned the university’s response.

“Harvard University has rightfully earned its place as the epitome of the moral and academic rot in higher education,” she said in a statement. “It is time to totally cut off US taxpayer funding to this institution that has failed to live up to its founding motto Veritas.”

Harvard is one of at least seven elite universities the Trump administration has threatened with funding cuts over alleged civil rights violations. Most of the accusations stem from what federal officials describe as elite universities’ failure to protect Jewish students from antisemitic harassment stemming from the campus protests over the Israel-Hamas war.

Garber, Harvard’s president, who is Jewish, has repeatedly said antisemitism is a problem at Harvard that the school is working to address. The school has already taken a number of steps, including enforcing new rules governing campus protests, moving to change the leadership of an academic center accused of biased teaching on Israel, and adopting a definition of antisemitism favored by the Trump administration.

On March 31, the Trump administration’s antisemitism task force acknowledged Harvard’s efforts but said it was nevertheless reviewing $9 billion in federal funding for Harvard and its affiliates, such as research institutes and Boston-area teaching hospitals. It followed up with its first list of demands on April 3.

Then, last Friday, the government sent Harvard a more detailed explanation of its demands, which Harvard released Monday afternoon.

The Friday letter directed Harvard to implement “merit-based” admissions and hiring practices, saying the school must eliminate all preferences based on race, religion, sex, or national origin.

It ordered Harvard to undertake an audit of the student body, faculty, staff, and leadership to ensure sufficient “viewpoint diversity,” and report the results of the audit to the government.

It mandated changes to student disciplinary procedures and a ban on masks that conceal protesters’ identities. It also said Harvard “must investigate and carry out meaningful discipline for all violations that occurred” during the past two academic years.

In his Monday message, Garber described the Friday letter as “an updated and expanded list of demands,” an apparent reference to the more limited list sent on April 3. “We have informed the administration through our legal counsel that we will not accept their proposed agreement,” he wrote.

The letter was signed by Josh Gruenbaum, a top official at the US General Services Administration; Sean Keveney, acting general counsel at the Department of Health and Human Services; and Thomas Wheeler, acting general counsel at the Department of Education. Gruenbaum and Keveney have been publicly identified as members of the administration’s antisemitism task force.

In its response, Harvard’s lawyers said the university “has undertaken substantial policy and programmatic measures” during the past 15 months to fight antisemitism, promote ideological diversity, and maintain order on campus.

“But Harvard is not prepared to agree to demands that go beyond the lawful authority of this or any administration,” the lawyers, William Burck and Robert Hur, wrote.

“Neither Harvard nor any other private university can allow itself to be taken over by the federal government,” they wrote.

This is a breaking news story and will be updated.

Mike Damiano can be reached at mike.damiano@globe.com.