Trump admin suspends $200 million in research funds to UCLA over ‘antisemitism and bias’

President Donald Trump has been cracking down on colleges and universities that allow for, engage in, or fail to address antisemitic activities on campus adequately, particularly regarding the anti-Israel/pro-Palestinian protests and encampments that have occurred on numerous campuses nationwide after Israel responded militarily to Hamas’ terror attacks on Oct. 7, 2023.

That includes the University of California, Los Angeles, which was just stripped by the Trump administration of $200 million in federal funding for research, Breitbart reported.

The withdrawal of the federal research funds followed a determination by the Justice Department that UCLA had violated the civil rights of Jewish and Israeli students, faculty, staff, and guests on its campus during an April 2024 pro-Palestinian encampment.

UCLA’s antisemitic encampment

For about a week in late April 2024, UCLA administrators stood idly by while an anti-Israel/pro-Palestinian protest encampment was established and dominated a central plaza on campus, through which any individuals identified or perceived as Jewish or Israeli were denied passage, harassed, or even physically assaulted, unless they first denounced Israel and the Jewish faith.

The overtly antisemitic encampment was eventually dismantled, and hundreds of activists were arrested, only after counterprotesters took matters into their own hands to attack the camp.

In the wake of that incident, three Jewish students and a professor filed a lawsuit against UCLA for violating their civil rights, and on Tuesday, according to the Associated Press, the school agreed to settle that civil suit for more than $6 million.

Notice of civil rights violations

On the same day that the lawsuit was settled, however, UCLA President Michael Drake received a letter from Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon, head of the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division, to give notice of the department’s findings following an investigation of the April 2024 encampment.

Dhillon wrote, in part, that “the Department has concluded that UCLA’s response to the protest encampment on its campus in the spring of 2024 was deliberately indifferent to a hostile environment for Jewish and Israeli students in violation of the Equal Protection Clause and Title VI.”

For those alleged violations of the Fourteenth Amendment and the Civil Rights Act, respectively, UCLA was given until August 5 to seek a “voluntary resolution” of the violations, or else a formal complaint would be filed in district court by September 2.

Research funding suspended

It appears that the Trump administration declined to wait until that August 5 deadline to begin taking retributive action against UCLA, however, as the Daily Bruin reported on Thursday that federal funds for research programs had been suspended.

UCLA Chancellor Julio Frenk informed everyone in an email that he’d been notified by the National Science Foundation and the National Institutes of Health, among other federal agencies, that funds had been cut off because of “antisemitism and bias.”

A NSF spokesperson later confirmed to the news outlet that the funds had been suspended because the agency had determined that UCLA was “not in alignment with current NSF priorities and/or programmatic goals.”

UCLA has a decision to make

In all likelihood, assuming UCLA reaches out to the Trump administration for a “voluntary resolution” within the allotted time and agrees to settle the matter with certain stipulations, the research funding will be quickly restored.

If, however, the university does nothing more than complain or attempts to sue the administration, the funds will remain frozen, and the DOJ will proceed with prompt legal action.

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