The Trump administration is seeking more than $1 billion from the University of California at Los Angeles in exchange for releasing $584 million in federal research funding that the US froze last week.
A spokesperson for the University of California system confirmed the proposal and the amount in an email. UC President James Milliken wrote in a statement on Friday that system officials were reviewing the offer. The university said this week it’s entered talks with government officials to restore the grants.
“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,” Millken wrote, adding that the university had offered to engage in “good-faith” dialogue with the federal government.
The $1 billion proposal dwarfs the settlements agreed to by Columbia and Brown, two private universities that have inked deals with Trump, and is higher than the administration’s reported $500 million floor for a settlement with Harvard University. UCLA is the first public university to enter talks with the administration over frozen funds.
CNN reported that the draft agreement sent to UCLA would also require the university to set aside an additional $172 million for victims of a civil-rights law that bars employment discrimination based on race, color or national origin.
According to CNN, the sweeping settlement proposal would force UCLA to install a resolution monitor to enforce the terms and hire a senior administrator to oversee anti-discrimination compliance, both measures that Columbia agreed to last month. It would also require the university ban overnight campus protests, end race-based scholarships, revise its protest policies and share admissions data broken down by race with the federal government.
In addition, it would mandate single-sex housing for women, equal athletic recognition for female athletes, and bar the university’s hospital and medical school from providing gender-affirming care, all provisions that Brown agreed to in its deal last week.
The US Justice Department said last week that UCLA acted with “deliberate indifference” to alleged targeting of Jewish and Israeli students after the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attack and Israel’s subsequent invasion of Gaza. It had threatened to file a complaint in federal district court by Sept. 2 unless the school agreed to enter into talks.
UCLA became a flashpoint in spring 2024 as campus protests escalated nationwide over Israel’s war against Hamas, which is designated as a terrorist group by the US and the European Union. In addition to widespread allegations of anti-Jewish behavior at the California school, at least 15 people were injured on campus in April of last year when pro-Israel counter-demonstrators attacked a pro-Palestinian encampment.
The opening salvo in the Trump administration’s negotiations with UCLA came less than 24 hours after California Governor Gavin Newsom said the university shouldn’t “bend on their knees” to the White House as he alleged other universities that settled had.
“We’re not Brown, we’re not Columbia,” Newsom said. “I will fight like hell to make sure that doesn’t happen.”
With assistance from Janet Lorin.
This article was generated from an automated news agency feed without modifications to text.
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