Trump demands $1 bn from University of California, 5 times the agreed sum to settle antisemitism dispute

In yet another attack against top universities in the United States, President Donald Trump’s administration is seeking more than $1 billion from the University of California, Los Angeles , to restore its research funding. The government have been pushing its claim of antisemitism at UCLA over the university’s response to the 2024 student protests related to the Gaza crisis .

The figure is five times the sum Columbia University agreed to pay to settle similar federal accusations of antisemitism. The draft of the settlement obtained by The New York Times calls for the university to make a $1 billion payment to the US government and to contribute $172 million to a claims fund that would compensate “victims of civil rights violations.”

If UCLA accepts the settlement, it would be the largest payout by far for any university that has reached a deal with the White House so far. Earlier, Columbia University agreed to pay $221 million in connection with its settlement with the government, and Brown University pledged to spend $50 million with state workforce programs.

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In response to the Trump administration’s latest demand, the University of California’s president, James B. Milliken, said in a statement on Friday that the university had “just received a document from the Department of Justice and is reviewing it.”

“As a public university, we are stewards of taxpayer resources, and a payment of this scale would completely devastate our country’s greatest public university system as well as inflict great harm on our students and all Californians," he added.

The sharp turn toward UCLA

Ever since coming to power, the Trump administration has largely targeted elite private universities , referring to it as a campaign to fight against antisemitism and reshape institutions that it views as cathedrals of liberalism.

However, his crusade against UCLA has been extremely sharp. On July 29, the day after the university settled a lawsuit that accused it of allowing pro-Palestinian protesters to block Jewish students on campus, the Justice Department said it believed UCLA had committed civil rights violations.

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In the same week, Dr Julio Frenk, UCLA’s chancellor, stated that the federal government had begun freezing research funds. Interestingly, the White House’s wrath towards UCLA fit into a broad pattern of how the Trump administration has targeted California. All this can be attributed to the fact that the state’s governor, Gavin Newsom , is one of President Trump’s top political foes and a potential candidate for the White House.

Last week, a day before the Trump administration demanded the new settlement, Newsom suggested that the University of California would not bow to the federal government. “I will fight like hell to make sure that doesn’t happen,” said Newsom, an ex officio member of the university’s board of regents. “There are principles. There’s right and wrong, and we’ll do the right thing, and what President Trump is doing is wrong, and everybody knows it.”

The California governor made it clear that he would “do everything in my power to encourage them to do the right thing and not to become another law firm that bends on their knees, another company that sells their soul, or another institution that takes a shortcut and takes the easy wrong versus the hard right.”

However, UCLA maintained that it is willing to speak to the federal government. Milliken, the system’s newly installed president, said on Wednesday that the university had agreed “to engage in dialogue with the federal administration.” Though it sharply criticised the administration’s moves against funding.

“These cuts do nothing to address antisemitism,” said Milliken, who started his job on August 1. “Moreover, the extensive work that UCLA and the entire University of California have taken to combat antisemitism has been ignored."