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

Los Angeles Times

5 days ago

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 Attorney General 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.
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 community Thursday, Frenk wrote that the canceled grants are from NSF, NIH and other federal agencies, but he did not give a dollar amount or list the other agencies. A partial list of terminated grants reviewed by The Times added up to roughly $200 million. The list was provided by a source who was not authorized to share the information.
Frenk called the government's decision 'deeply disappointing' and 'a loss for Americans across the nation whose work, health, and future depend on the groundbreaking work we do.'
'In its notice to us, the federal government claims antisemitism and bias as the reasons,' Frenk wrote. 'This far-reaching penalty of defunding life-saving research does nothing to address any alleged discrimination.'
Spokespeople for the NSF and NIH did not immediately reply to requests for comment Thursday.
The federal government's decision to cut UCLA off from significant federal funds follows a similar playbook to its dealings with Ivy League institutions.
The Trump administration this spring canceled billions of dollars in federal grants to Harvard, which has sued in federal court to reverse the terminations and stop a Trump move to rescind its ability to host international students. Harvard is separately in negotiations with the White House to end the legal fight.
Columbia University this month agreed to pay more than $200 million to the federal government to resolve investigations over alleged antisemitism amid its response to 2024 pro-Palestinian protests. On Wednesday, Brown University also came to a $50 million agreement with the White House. The Brown payment will go toward Rhode Island workforce development programs.
The Department of Justice said this week that it had found UCLA guilty of violating the civil rights of Jewish and Israeli students. The department also indicated that it wanted to the university to enter into negotiations to avoid a federal lawsuit.
The department gave UCLA a Tuesday deadline to communicate its desire to negotiate. If not, the DOJ said, it was ready to sue by Sept. 2.
The University of California, in a statement, was unclear on whether it would settle or go to court.
'UCLA has addressed and will continue to address the issues raised in [the] Department of Justice notice,' Stett Holbrook, Associate Director, Strategic and Critical Communications, wrote in a statement Wednesday. He cited a $6.45 million settlement the university reached with Jewish students who had sued over claims that the 2024 encampment had discriminated against them.
'We have cooperated fully with the Department of Justice's investigation and are reviewing its findings closely,' Holbrook wrote.
In his Thursday letter, Frenk shot back against the cuts.
'Let me be clear: Federal research grants are not handouts. Our researchers compete fiercely for these grants, proposing work that the government itself deems vital to the country's health, safety and economic future,' he wrote.
'Grants lead to medical breakthroughs, economic advancement, improved national security and global competitiveness — these are national priorities,' Frenk wrote, adding that 'we are actively evaluating our best course of action. We will be in constant communication as decisions move forward.'