President Donald Trump by The White House / Flickr (Left), Aerial Film Studio / stock.adobe.com (Right)
The Trump administration has frozen $339 million in research grants to the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), amid claims that the school illegally practiced affirmative action, enabled antisemitic behavior, and allowed biological men to compete on women’s sports teams.
According to AP News, the federal government said the Civil Rights Division of the U.S. Department of Justice found that UCLA’s actions in respect to the pro-Palestine protests that broke out on campus in May 2024 violated both the Fourteenth Amendment and the Civil Rights Act. The allegation states that the school acted “with deliberate indifference in creating a hostile educational environment for Jewish and Israeli students.”
The federal government also cited UCLA’s affirmative action practices as reasons to suspend funding. California banned affirmative action in 1996 and the US Supreme Court struck the practice down in 2023, but UCLA allows applicants to disclose their race and takes family income and ZIP code into account during the admissions process.
Federal agencies notified the school last week that the grants would be paused, which AP News reported is an uncommon case of the government withholding funds from a public university. The Trump administration has previously suspended grants from private universities over similar allegations of civil rights violations.
UCLA Chancellor Julio Frenk issued a statement responding to the grant suspension, calling it a loss for researchers as well as for “Americans across the nation whose work, health, and future depend on the groundbreaking work we do.”
As CatholicVote previously reported, UCLA settled a lawsuit with Jewish students July 29 agreeing to pay out $6.13 million in donations to Jewish ministries and organizations. The lawsuit had argued that UCLA officials failed to protect Jewish students from the campus encampments, barricades, and protests in May. The protestors had also excluded Jews from certain areas on campus, including classrooms and the library.
AP News additionally reported that Columbia University agreed July 23 to pay $200 million after the federal government suspended more than $400 million over allegations of discrimination. Following the settlement, the Trump administration has said it will restore the research grants to the school.
>> Columbia lays off 180 after Trump admin pulls $400M over antisemitism failures <<
The outlet added, “The Trump administration plans to use its deal with Columbia as a template for other universities, with financial penalties that are now seen as an expectation.”
