The Trump administration is in search of a $1 billion settlement from the College of California, Los Angeles, a White Home official mentioned Friday, weeks after the Division of Justice accused the varsity of antisemitism and different civil rights violations.
UCLA is the primary public college to be focused by a widespread funding freeze over allegations of civil rights violations associated to antisemitism and affirmative motion.
President Donald Trump’s administration has frozen or paused federal funding over comparable allegations in opposition to elite non-public faculties. In latest weeks, the administration has struck offers with Brown College for $50 million and Columbia College for $221 million however has explored bigger settlements, reminiscent of with Harvard College.
The White Home official didn’t element any further calls for the administration has made to UCLA or elaborate on the settlement quantity. The particular person was not licensed to talk publicly in regards to the request and spoke on situation of anonymity.
The Trump administration suspended $584 million in federal grants for UCLA, the college mentioned this week. The Division of Justice’s Civil Rights Division issued a discovering that UCLA violated the equal safety clause of the Fourteenth Modification and Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 “by performing with deliberate indifference in making a hostile instructional atmosphere for Jewish and Israeli college students.”
The college had drawn widespread criticism for the way it dealt with dispersing an encampment of Israel-Hamas struggle protesters in 2024. Jewish college students mentioned demonstrators within the encampment blocked them from attending to class. One night time, counterprotesters attacked the encampment, throwing site visitors cones and firing pepper spray, with combating that continued for hours, injuring greater than a dozen folks, earlier than police stepped in. The following day, after tons of defied orders to go away, greater than 200 folks had been arrested.
The College of California’s president, James B. Milliken, mentioned in a press release Friday that the college was reviewing a doc it “simply acquired” from the Division of Justice.
“Earlier this week, we supplied to have interaction in good religion dialogue with the Division to guard the College and its crucial analysis mission,” Milliken mentioned. “As a public college, we’re stewards of taxpayer sources and a fee of this scale would fully devastate our nation’s biggest public college system in addition to inflict nice hurt on our college students and all Californians.”
This could not be the college’s first settlement over the 2024 protests. Final month, UCLA reached a $6 million settlement with three Jewish college students and a Jewish professor who sued, arguing that the college violated their civil rights by permitting pro-Palestinian protesters to dam their entry to courses and different areas on campus in 2024.
The settlement comes practically a yr after a preliminary injunction was issued, marking the primary time a U.S. decide had dominated in opposition to a college over their dealing with of on-campus demonstrations in opposition to Israel’s struggle in Gaza.
UCLA initially had argued that it had no obligation over the problem as a result of protesters, not the college, blocked Jewish college students’ entry to areas. The college additionally labored with regulation enforcement to thwart makes an attempt to arrange new protest camps.
However U.S. District Decide Mark Scarsi disagreed and ordered UCLA to create a plan to guard Jewish college students on campus. The College of California, one of many nation’s largest public college programs, has since created systemwide campus tips on protests and has mentioned it’s dedicated to campus security and inclusivity and can proceed to implement suggestions.
As a part of the settlement, UCLA mentioned it is going to contribute $2.3 million to eight organizations that fight antisemitism and assist the college’s Jewish group. It additionally has created an Workplace of Campus and Neighborhood Security, instituting new insurance policies to handle protests on campus.
UCLA Chancellor Julio Frenk, whose Jewish father and grandparents fled Nazi Germany to Mexico and whose spouse is the daughter of a Holocaust survivor, launched an initiative to fight antisemitism and anti-Israeli bias.
The Trump administration has used its management of federal funding to push for reforms at elite faculties that the president decries as overrun by liberalism and antisemitism. The administration additionally has launched investigations into variety, fairness and inclusion efforts, saying they discriminate in opposition to white and Asian American college students.
Final month Columbia College agreed to pay $200 million as a part of a settlement to resolve investigations into the federal government’s allegations that the varsity violated federal antidiscrimination legal guidelines. The settlement additionally restores greater than $400 million in analysis grants.
The Trump administration plans to make use of its cope with Columbia as a template for different universities, with monetary penalties that at the moment are seen as an expectation.
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AP reporters Jocelyn Gecker and Julie Watson contributed to this report.
