An attempt to bar the school from hosting international students is just the latest escalation of an ongoing back-and-forth over Harvard's ideological future.

For those who know Pritzker, the senior fellow of the Harvard Corporation, it is no surprise that the 66-year-old Chicago billionaire wants the university to fight back, even if the costs are steep.

The Trump administration is following through on threats to terminate $2.7 billion dollars in federal grants and other funding at Harvard University, punishment for alleged antisemitism on campus. One professor called it "the academic equivalent of nuclear war.