The Trump administration announced last week that it would freeze federal grants for another prestigious research university. But this time, this is not a private institution.
This is the University of California, Los Angeles, and if the UC system does not reach an agreement with the federal government, campuses in one of the largest public higher education systems in the country could suffer further government penalties. National leaders condemned the freeze of funds, and UCLA faculty urged university administrators to fight. But universities have little to say about how the program responds to the government.
The Justice Department has been investigating the University of California system for several months and they believe anti-Semitism, allegedly in admissions and “use of race and gender-based discrimination in college employment practices.” The agency’s investigation into the broader UC system is still underway, but last week the Justice Department told system officials it had made a finding on a campus and asked for a quick response.
“The department concluded that the UCLA’s response to protest camps on its campus in the spring of 2024 was deliberately indifferent to the hostile environment of Jews and Israeli students,” the letter said. (The 1964 Civil Rights Act prohibited universities that received federal funding from being based on common descent, including anti-Semitism.)
The letter does not clearly state what the Trump administration now wants UC to do with its alleged failure to handle the pro-Pastin camp that ended more than a year ago, and UCLA itself was demolished a week after its creation. The Ministry of Justice did not provide Internal Advanced ED Further information on Monday, but a news release from U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi was accompanied by a letter from the Justice Department, indicating that the Trump administration hopes for strong concessions.
“Our investigation of the University of California system has found evidence of systemic anti-Semitism at UCLA, demanding serious responsibility for the institution,” Bondy said. “This disgusting violation of civil rights targeting students will not be tolerated: the Department of Justice will force the UCLA to put Jewish Americans at risk and continue our ongoing investigation into other campuses in the UC system.”
Hours before the Justice Department announced the news, UCLA announced that it paid $6.45 million to resolve lawsuits from anti-Semitism Jewish students associated with the camp. But that is not enough to ease the federal government.
The Justice Department letter said the department “trying to enter into a voluntary resolution agreement with the university to ensure the elimination of hostile environments and to take reasonable steps to prevent its recurrence.” It asked the University of California officials to contact the special counsel today if they are “interested in solving this issue along these issues,” providing an email address and a non-functional nine-digit phone number for them to contact. The agency is preparing to sue by September 2: “Unless we can reach an agreement reasonably determined.”
That July 29 letter did not end. Between the deadlines for UC’s contact with the Justice Department at that time and today, multiple federal agencies said they were cutting UCLA grants. The total amount is not clear – the number of other media reports exceeds $300 million.
It reminds me of what happened at Columbia University and Harvard University. But unlike those private institutions, the Trump administration has not issued a general demand letter explaining how UCLA changes its approach, whether in admissions, student discipline, or otherwise.
A spokesperson for the Ministry of Health and Human Services, including the National Institutes of Health, responded Internal Advanced EDInformation on how much money is in the NIH grant funding has been cancelled and why it is attributed to the unnamed HHS official’s response: “We will not fund institutions that promote anti-Semitism. We will use all tools to ensure institutions comply with the law.”
A spokesperson for the National Science Foundation wrote in an email: “NSF” informed UCLA that the agency is suspending the awards to UCLA because they do not align with current NSF priorities and/or programmatic goals. “The spokesperson did not specify what priorities or goals, and his email did not mention anti-Semitism.
The Department of Energy went beyond anti-Semitism allegations in its letter to UCLA, saying “UCLA is engaged in racism in the form of illegal affirmative action.
Mia McIver, executive director of the National Association of University Professors, said what is happening is that “the Trump administration is expanding its attack on higher education faculty, staff and students to expand more broadly from Ivy League universities to the public sector.” McIver, who has taught for a decade at UCLA, said the administration intends to “exercise total control over universities and universities across various institutions.”
“It is the federal government’s use of power leverage that has nothing to do with the basic allegations,” McPherey said. “Severing off research on diabetes, cancer, heart disease will not improve the safety of Jewish teachers and students on campus, and will not address anti-Semitism.”
“Enough”
What is the UC system planning to do? A spokesperson postponed the comment to UCLA, which also did not provide an interview or answer written questions on Monday. A spokesperson for the University of California system on Friday issued a statement Friday after system chair James B. Milliken began new work on August 1, following the grant freeze.
Milliken called it “a large amount of research grants and contracts suspended this week” at UCLA, “deeply disturbing,” though “not surprising.”
“Research at UCLA and throughout UC saves lives more broadly, improves national security, helps feed the world, and drives innovative economies in California and the country,” he said. “This is central to our identity as a teaching and learning community. UC and campus leadership have been looking forward and preparing for the federal action we see this week, and preparation helps support our decision now.”
However, he did not say what the decision was.
Similarly, on Friday, California Gov. Gavin Newsom, the 2028 presidential candidate and a former member of the UC Board of Trustees, issued a statement calling it “a cruel manipulation that exploits Jewish students’ real concerns about anti-Semitism on campus as an excuse to cut millions of dollars in all Americans to make all Americans safer and healthier.”
“It’s an action for an American who doesn’t care about students, Californians, or doesn’t follow their Maga style,” Newsom said.
“We share the goal of eliminating anti-Semitism. It has no place on our campus or society,” UCLA Prime Minister Julio Frenk said in a video on Friday. He said his wife is the daughter of Holocaust survivors and his grandparents left Germany in the 1930s after being kicked out of the house because of an intolerable atmosphere of anti-Semitism and hatred.”
“These experiences can make me fight myself with all forms of paranoid commitment, but the punishment for life-saving research does not address any so-called discrimination,” Frenke said. “We have a contingency plan,” although he did not elaborate.
In a petition, the UCLA Teachers Association’s executive committee criticized UCLA executives for past “expected obedience” to the federal government, which said “has not stopped the Trump administration’s attacks yet.”
“UCLA’s expected obedience has put itself in a position of weakness and we must choose to stand up,” the association wrote. “We don’t have to succumb to the Trump administration’s demands for illegal and bad faith. UCLA is a state university with financial and moral support from the world’s fourth largest economy.”
The association asked the University of California to “prove our strength as the world’s largest university system and reject the Trump administration’s malicious demands”, adding: “Every failed university legalizes the Trump administration’s attacks on all of our institutions.”
It requires the U.S. to fight the government in court, use unlimited endowments to “help keep the university’s mission intact” and work with Newsom and state lawmakers for financial support. The petition calls on university administrators to call for “the sacrifice of our strengths and our communities to deeply cultivate and protect communities that have been more than 100 years, which will only ask for more, this will only ask for more.”
Meanwhile, the UCLA Palestine judicial teacher in Palestine said in a statement: “Israel continues to tighten its US-based siege of Gaza, where the calculated denial of humanitarian aid being ongoing air bombing, which is in the ongoing air bombing. The university is accomplice.”
McIver urges the UC system not to cut deals between Columbia and Brown University.
“There are always other options, and every trade cut is for those downstream of the deal, which makes it even more difficult for those who continue to resist these attacks,” she said.
“The Trump administration’s goal is to control universities at all levels in all states and every solution reached has basically contributed to that goal,” she said. “So everyone across the country has to say, ‘Enough, we will not tolerate this blackmail, you can’t kidnap hostages on our campus, we will not take it away anymore.’”
