The Trump administration has suspended an estimated $200 million in medical, science, and other federal grants to UCLA, alleging that the university has discriminated in its admissions process and failed to "promote a research environment free of antisemitism."
The suspension, announced Thursday, was made after Attorney General Pam Bondi and the Department of Justice earlier this week said UCLA would pay a "heavy price" for its "deliberate indifference" to the rights of Jewish and Israeli students after the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attack on Israel and the campus protests last year, according to The Los Angeles Times.
The news also came on the heels of a $6.45 million settlement UCLA reached this week with Jewish students to resolve a lawsuit claiming the university allowed pro-Palestinian protesters to stop Jewish students and faculty from accessing places on the Los Angeles campus.
The grant cancellations are the first from the Trump administration against UCLA, and come after settlements were reached in other universities, including Columbia and Brown, on several issues, including antisemitism, gender identity in sports, and admissions.
UCLA Chancellor Julio Frenk said in a statement Thursday that the clawbacks will result in money lost from "hundreds of grants," and that the action will hurt not only the school but "Americans across the nation whose work, health, and future depend on the groundbreaking work we do," reported ABC News.
"In its notice to us, the federal government claims antisemitism and bias as the reasons. This far-reaching penalty of defunding life-saving research does nothing to address any alleged discrimination," he added.
Frenk further insisted that the university shares the goals of eradicating antisemitism across society, and added that federal research grants are "not handouts."
"Grants lead to medical breakthroughs, economic advancement, improved national security and global competitiveness — these are national priorities," he said.
Frenk received a letter from the National Science Foundation, dated Wednesday, in which he was informed that the grants were being terminated because UCLA "continues to engage in race discrimination, including in its admissions process, and in other areas of student life."
Frenk did not release the amount of grant money that was lost, but the Los Angeles Times estimated that the total was about $200 million, basing their estimates on a partial list of suspended grants reviewed by the newspaper.
The list had been provided by a source who was not authorized to release the information.
An estimated $180 million in about 300 NSF grants were canceled, after about half the funds were already dispersed.
Before Wednesday's letter, researchers were expecting to get the other half of the money.
Frenk said that grants were also canceled from the National Institutes of Health and other federal agencies.
The DOJ has given UCLA a deadline of Tuesday to communicate whether it wants to negotiate, and if it does not, the department said it will be ready to sue the university by Sept. 2.
Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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