Trump administration demands UCLA pay 1 bln USD to settle antisemitism allegations

U.S. President Donald Trump is "trying to silence academic freedom" by "attacking one of the most important public institutions in the United States of America," said California Governor Gavin Newsom.

LOS ANGELES, Aug. 9 (Xinhua) -- The U.S. government has demanded the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) pay a 1-billion-U.S.-dollar settlement to resolve accusations of antisemitism, offering to restore frozen federal grant funding in return, officials have said.

UC President James B. Milliken, who oversees the 10-campus system that includes UCLA, said in a statement Friday that the university "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," Milliken noted.

He added that UCLA and the UC system play a vital role in developing life-saving technologies, advancing the U.S. economy, and protecting national security.

A draft agreement sent to the school Friday would require UCLA to pay the federal government 1 billion dollars in installments and set up a 172-million-dollar claims fund for people affected by violations of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act, which prohibits employment discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, or national origin, CNN reported.

The proposed agreement -- which would be the largest settlement the administration has ever received from a higher education institution -- calls for appointing a resolution monitor to oversee the school and creating a new senior administrator position focused on compliance with anti-discrimination laws, the report noted.

California Governor Gavin Newsom rejected the settlement proposal, describing it as "extortion" and vowing to challenge it in court.

U.S. President Donald Trump is "trying to silence academic freedom" by "attacking one of the most important public institutions in the United States of America," Newsom was quoted by the Los Angeles Times as saying.

Newsom said he would "stand tall and push back" and that he believed "every member of the California Legislature feels the same way."

Newsom was critical of the settlements two Ivy League universities reached with the Trump administration to restore grants, suggesting UCLA would take a different route, the Los Angeles Times reported.

UCLA should not bend "on their knees" to Trump in grant negotiations, Newsom said on Thursday. "We're not Brown, we're not Columbia, and I'm not going to be governor if we act like that."

UCLA said on Wednesday that the Trump administration had suspended 584 million dollars in federal grants for the university over claims of "antisemitism and bias."

The suspension was "not only a loss to the researchers who rely on critical grants" but also to "Americans across the nation whose work, health and future depend on our groundbreaking research and scholarship," said UCLA Chancellor Julio Frenk.

Milliken also criticized the funding cuts, saying they "do nothing to address antisemitism" and that the university's efforts to combat it had been "apparently ignored."

The suspension followed a U.S. Department of Justice civil rights investigation alleging UCLA had been "deliberately indifferent" to the harassment of Jewish and Israeli students during pro-Palestinian protests on campuses in 2024.

Last week, the university agreed to pay 6.45 million dollars to settle a lawsuit over the treatment of Jewish students and a professor during the protests.

The Trump administration has taken similar actions against elite private universities. Columbia University recently agreed to pay more than 200 million dollars to restore federal funding after a probe into campus antisemitism, while Brown University reached a 50-million-dollar settlement over its treatment of Jewish students and the consideration of race in admissions.

Sixty colleges and universities across the U.S., including Harvard, Yale, Brown, Columbia and Stanford, have been under Department of Education investigation for alleged antisemitic discrimination and harassment on their campuses. ■