Trump administration freezes $339M in UCLA grants and accuses the school of rights violations

Boston Globe

6 days ago

The Trump administration paused the research funding as part of an investigation by the government's antisemitism task force, two administration officials said. The freeze included about $240 million in research grants from the Department of Health and Human Services and the NIH, $81 million from the NSF, and $18.2 million from the Energy Department, a White House spokesperson said.
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The move makes UCLA the latest university to be targeted by Trump administration officials. It comes amid a broader pushback by the administration against what it sees as 'woke' ideologies.
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The NSF said in a statement that it was 'suspending awards to UCLA because they are not in alignment with current NSF priorities and/or programmatic goals.' The NIH did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
In recent weeks, Columbia University, the University of Pennsylvania, Harvard, Brown, and others have had federal funding reduced or threatened based on broad accusations from the Trump administration that range from antisemitism to improper support for diversity, equity, and inclusion programs. In some cases, the government has used the threat of funding cuts to extract concessions and hundreds of millions of dollars from universities.
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Last year, UCLA was the site of one of the nation's biggest protests against the Israeli military offensive in the Gaza Strip. The demonstrations prompted claims from across the political spectrum that the university didn't do enough to protect Jewish students or pro-Palestinian demonstrators.
On Tuesday, the university agreed to pay more than $6 million to settle a lawsuit from Jewish students and a professor who said that the university had allowed a hostile protest on campus. After the settlement was announced, the Department of Justice separately said that it had found the university violated civil rights laws by failing to respond to students' complaints of antisemitism.
Although the Trump administration intensified its attacks on UCLA this week, the school had been a target of the government's scrutiny for more than a year. In May 2024, Frenk's predecessor, Gene D. Block, testified before a congressional committee examining campus antisemitism. And in February, a Trump administration task force on antisemitism identified UCLA as one of 10 schools it intended to visit as it investigated whether 'remedial action is warranted.'
In recent weeks, UCLA would not say whether any of the task force's investigators had been to the campus.
Frenk said in his statement Thursday that UCLA had taken 'concrete action' to address antisemitism and discrimination, including creating a new office of campus safety.
'This far-reaching penalty of defunding lifesaving research does nothing to address any alleged discrimination,' he wrote.
He called the cuts a 'loss for Americans across the nation' whose work and health rely on the university's research.
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The funding cut is an early test for Frenk, who became chancellor in January, as well as James B. Milliken, who took over as the University of California system's leader Friday.
State and education leaders have been deeply concerned about the possibility that the Trump administration would target the university system as a whole, but especially the campuses in Los Angeles and Berkeley.
Both schools were on the antisemitism task force's list for potential visits. But the Department of Education has also said it was investigating accusations of antisemitism at several other UC campuses.