Trump freezes $200 million in UCLA science and medical research funding, citing antisemitism

The Trump administration has frozen hundreds of science, medical and other federal grants to UCLA worth nearly $200 million, citing the university’s alleged “discrimination” in admissions and failure to “promote a research environment free of antisemitism.”The decision to pull funding comes after Atty.Gen.Pam Bondi and the Justice Department said this week that UCLA would pay a “heavy price” for acting with “deliberate indifference” to the civil rights of Jewish and Israeli students who complained of antisemitic incidents since the Oct.

7, 2023, Hamas attack on Israel, Israel’s ensuing war in Gaza and campus protests the events spurred last year.The cancellation of grants is the first large-scale targeted funding claw-back against UCLA under the Trump administration.Until now, the White House has largely focused its attempts to remake higher education on elite East Coast schools such as Columbia, Brown and the University of Pennsylvania.

Each has reached deals with the government in recent weeks over issues including admissions, Jewish student life, student discipline, antisemitism training and gender identity in sports.California The DOJ issued a notice to UCLA and a warning of a pending lawsuit, saying the campus violated Jewish student civil rights last year during a pro-Palestinian encampment.

The same day, UCLA said it would pay $6.45 million in a suit over the encampment brought by Jewish students.In a letter to UCLA Chancellor Julio Frenk dated Wednesday, the National Science Foundation wrote that it was terminating grants because “the University of California – Los Angeles continues to engage in race discrimination including in its admissions process, and in other areas of student life.”An estimated 300 NSF grants totaling $180 million have been canceled.About half of the funds were already distributed.

Before the letter was released Thursday, researchers were expecting the other half to follow.In a letter to the university comm...