Trump Demands $1B From UCLA — Enough To 'Completely Devastate' UC System: Report

LOS ANGELES, CA — The Trump administration on Friday called on UCLA to pay $1 billion to settle federal accusations of antisemitism, a demand the UC president said would “completely devastate” the University of California system, the nation's most acclaimed public university system.

The proposed settlement would also be the largest payout from a university to the Trump administration, dwarfing the $221M the Trump administration got out of Columbia University and nearly doubling the research funding freeze the administration hit UCLA with last month.

Federal officials have proposed an agreement in which UCLA would pay the government $1 billion over multiple installments, according to CNN, citing a draft proposal of the document.

The proposal comes after the U.S. Department of Justice last month announced it determined UCLA violated the rights of Jewish and Israeli students by failing to "adequately respond to complaints of severe, pervasive and objectively offensive harassment and abuse" between Oct. 7, 2023, and the present.

UCLA soon after agreed to a $6 million fine connected to the finding.

Some UCLA students had complained of antisemitic incidents on the campus since the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attack on Israel. The complaints increased during Israel's ongoing war in Gaza, which Gaza officials said in June has left 55,000 Palestinians dead.

Campus protests included a large pro-Palestinian encampment that was ultimately dismantled in an overnight police raid that ended with hundreds of arrests.

• Read more: UCLA Cancels Classes As Violence Rages Between Protesters

After the DOJ announced its findings about protest activity at UCLA, the administration announced it would freeze millions of dollars in UCLA medical and science research grants, which university officials said totaled $584 million. The National Science Foundation informed UCLA in a letter that it was terminating the grants because the university "continues to engage in race discrimination including in its admissions process and in other areas of student life," the Los Angeles Times reported.

At that time, University of California system President James B. Milliken president said he agreed to "engage in dialogue with the federal administration" about the decision to freeze the research funding — a move that Milliken said was a "death knell" for critical research.

The Trump administration's $1 billion proposal would restore some or all of those grants. But Milliken in a statement said it would come with enormous consequences.

"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. Americans across this great nation rely on the vital work of UCLA and the UC system for technologies and medical therapies that saves lives, grows the U.S. economy, and protects our national security," he said.

City News Service contributed to this report.