Trump wants UCLA to pay $1 billion to restore its research funding

The Trump administration is seeking more than $1 billion from UCLA to restore hundreds of millions of dollars in federal research funding that the government halted, according to a draft of a settlement agreement reviewed by The New York Times.

The proposal calls for the university to make a $1 billion payment to the US government and to contribute $172 million to a claims fund that would compensate victims of civil rights violations.

If UCLA accedes to the demand, it would be the largest payout — by far — of any university that has so far reached a deal with the White House. Columbia University agreed to pay $221 million in connection with its settlement with the government, and Brown University pledged to spend $50 million with state workforce programs.

The University of California’s president, James B. Milliken, said in a statement Friday that the university had “just received a document from the Department of Justice and is reviewing it.”

He added: “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.”

Administrators at the campus in Los Angeles did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Julio Frenk, UCLA’s chancellor, said this week that about $584 million in research funding was already “suspended and at risk.” The university, like many other top schools, is deeply dependent on federal research money; about 11% of its revenues come from federal grants and contracts.

The Trump administration has largely targeted elite private universities in recent months as part of what it has depicted as a campaign to fight antisemitism and reshape institutions that it views as cathedrals of liberalism.

But its turn toward UCLA has been sharp. On July 29, the day the University of California settled a lawsuit that accused UCLA of allowing pro-Palestinian protesters to block Jewish students on campus, the Justice Department said it believed UCLA had committed civil rights violations.

Frenk announced later that week that the federal government had started freezing research money.

The White House’s demands of UCLA fit into a broad pattern of how the Trump administration has targeted California. The state’s governor, Gavin Newsom, is one of President Donald Trump’s top political foes and a potential candidate for the White House.

On Thursday, the day before the terms of the White House’s proposed settlement emerged, Newsom suggested that the University of California would not bow to the federal government.

“I will fight like hell to make sure that doesn’t happen,” said Newsom, an ex officio member of the university’s board of regents. “There’s principles. There’s right and wrong, and we’ll do the right thing, and what President Trump is doing is wrong, and everybody knows it.”

He added that he would “do everything in my power to encourage them to do the right thing and not to become another law firm that bends on their knees, another company that sells their soul, or another institution that takes a short cut and takes the easy wrong versus the hard right.”

But the University of California has shown a willingness to talk to the federal government. Milliken, the system’s newly installed president, said Wednesday that the university had agreed “to engage in dialogue with the federal administration.” Milliken, though, sharply criticised the administration’s moves against funding.

“These cuts do nothing to address antisemitism,” said Milliken, who started his job Aug. 1. “Moreover, the extensive work that UCLA and the entire University of California have taken to combat antisemitism has apparently been ignored.”

The White House’s proposed terms, some of which were first reported by CNN, were not exclusively financial. Among other conditions, the government is seeking the appointment of a monitor to enforce the settlement’s terms, the abolition of scholarships connected to race or ethnicity, and the cessation of diversity statements in hiring. On Friday, Newsom, along with several other state officials, called the White House’s proposal “a billion-dollar political shakedown.”

“Trump has weaponised the Department of Justice to punish California, crush free thinking, and kneecap the greatest public university system in the world,” the officials said in a statement, adding, “We are united against Trump’s assault and will fight like hell because California will not bow to this kind of disgusting political extortion.”

But the government included a provision, as it did with Brown and Columbia, that would seem to keep US officials from using the settlement to interfere directly with academic freedom, admissions and hiring.

The administration is negotiating with a handful of universities, including Cornell and Harvard. And although Brown and Columbia each agreed to payments, the government’s settlement with the University of Pennsylvania included no financial penalties.

Among the universities that have been targeted by the Trump administration, Harvard is the only one that has sued, arguing that the government’s moves are illegal. It was unclear whether UCLA would take that step.

Even as Harvard’s case moves through the court system, the school has been in talks with the Trump administration in an effort to end the conflict.