The Trump administration has revoked $339.2 million in federal funding from the University of California, Los Angeles, over campus anti-Semitism and other civil rights violations, according to a Friday report.
The frozen funds include $18.2 million from the Department of Energy, $240 million from the Department of Health and Human Services and the National Institutes of Health, and $81 million from the National Science Foundation, the Daily Caller reported, citing a senior administration official. Each department identified multiple civil rights violations by UCLA, according to letters addressed to the school.
The news comes as the Trump administration cracks down on universities over anti-Semitism and other “woke” ideologies on campus. Last year, UCLA saw one of the nation’s largest anti-Israel protests, sparking bipartisan criticism that the university failed to protect Jewish students and condoned pro-terrorist rhetoric. The school has also faced scrutiny for engaging in affirmative action in its admissions process and allowing biological men to compete in women’s sports.
UCLA “engages in racism, in the form of illegal affirmative action,” “fails to promote a research environment free of antisemitism and bias,” and “discriminates against and endangers women by allowing men in women’s sports and private women-only spaces,” the Department of Energy said in its letter.
HHS and NIH’s letter to UCLA offers similar explanations for the funding pause, according to the Daily Caller, while the NSF said in its letter that it is “suspending awards to U.C.L.A. because they are not in alignment with current N.S.F. priorities and/or programmatic goals,” the New York Times reported.
UCLA chancellor Julio Frenk in a statement late Thursday condemned the Trump administration’s funding freeze.
“With this decision, hundreds of grants may be lost, adversely affecting the lives and life-changing work of UCLA researchers, faculty and staff,” Frenk said, alleging that “this far-reaching penalty of defunding life-saving research does nothing to address any alleged discrimination.”
UCLA on Tuesday agreed to pay more than $6 million to settle a lawsuit from Jewish students and a professor who said the school permitted a hostile protest environment.
The Trump administration has also withheld billions in federal funding from Harvard University, Columbia University, the University of Pennsylvania, and others over their failure to rein in anti-Semitic protests.
Columbia agreed last week to pay $221 million to regain federal funding and settle concerns about campus anti-Semitism and other civil rights violations. Harvard, which lost nearly $3 billion in federal funding this year, has indicated that it would pay up to $500 million to settle its dispute with Trump, four people familiar with the negotiations told the New York Times.
