Since March, the Trump administration has suspended the research grants of multiple elite private universities for allegedly allowing antisemitism on their campuses.
But in July, it went after UCLA, a public university that experts said has fewer resources to handle the suspension of its grants and is more wrapped up in politics as one of the flagship universities of a blue state.
About 800 of UCLA’s grants from multiple federal agencies – including the National Institutes of Health, National Science Foundation and the United States Department of Energy – were suspended between July 30 and 31. The grants, totalling $584 million, were frozen in response to the university’s alleged use of affirmative action, failure to promote research environments free of antisemitism and “allowing men to participate in women’s sports,” according to letters from the federal government.
The federal government is seeking $1 billion from UCLA – along with the school’s commitment to several policy and leadership changes – to restore the funding.
[Related: Proposed UCLA settlement from federal government seeks $1 billion, policy changes]
A judge restored UCLA’s NSF grants, which comprised about 300 of the suspended grants, Aug. 12, arguing that the suspensions violated a previous preliminary injunction granted to UC researchers that barred the NSF from terminating any more of their grants. However, the NIH and DOE grants remain frozen.
[Related: Judge orders Trump administration to restore some of UCLA’s frozen research grants]
UCLA is the first and only public university in the country to face widescale federal research funding suspensions. Several private universities, though, have had their funds frozen, including Columbia University and Brown University – which settled with the federal government for $221 million and $50 million, respectively – and Harvard University, which is currently in negotiations to restore its funding.
Blake Emerson, a professor of law, said the UC, as a public institution, does not have the same financial resources and relies more heavily on federal funding than the private universities Trump has targeted.
About 11% of the university’s revenue comes from its grants and contracts with the federal government, according to The New York Times.
“The University of California is not as well resourced, generally speaking, as an institution like Harvard or even Columbia that simply have substantial private endowments they can rely on,” Emerson said.
Zev Yaroslavsky, the director of the Los Angeles Initiative at the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs, said the UC – and public universities as a whole – have been under financial strains.
In the initial state budget proposal for the 2025-26 fiscal year, Gov. Gavin Newsom proposed a 7.95% cut – amounting to about $396.6 million – to the UC’s yearly base funding. After several months of discussion, however, Newsom and the California State Legislature came to the agreement that the UC would not receive any funding reductions for the upcoming fiscal year – although $130 million is set to be cut next fiscal year.
Emerson is the co-author of a letter from law faculty across the UC addressed to the UC Board of Regents, which called on the Regents to support Gov. Gavin Newsom’s pledge to fight against the federal funding suspension. The letter has amassed over 170 signatures.
Newsom said he plans to “fight like hell” against Trump’s “disgusting political extortion” in an Aug. 8 joint statement with other state leaders, including California Legislative Jewish Caucus co-chairs Scott Wiener and Jesse Gabriel.
“There’s been a marked contrast between the posture of Governor Newsom and – through Governor Newsom – of the State of California, which is currently taking a more aggressive posture versus the University of California and UCLA, which have not,” Emerson said.
Daniel Mitchell, a professor emeritus at the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs, said it is unclear as to who is representing the UC during ongoing negotiations, adding that information about the negotiations at large has not been publicized.
The UC Board of Regents held a closed emergency meeting Aug. 11 to “discuss a path forward” regarding the funding freeze and the administration’s proposed settlement. Meredith Turner, the UC’s senior vice president of external relations and communications, said leadership across the UC “spent recent days evaluating the demand, updating the UC community and engaging with stakeholders” in a statement following the meeting.
UCLA’s role as a public institution situates it as a political institution, which has not been the case at private universities like Harvard and Columbia, Mitchell added. He added that UCLA is the federal government’s test for targeting “a public institution in a so-called blue state,” given that previously affected universities were private.
“The governor seems to be running for president in 2028 and he has been very vocal on social media in the last couple months in attacking the Trump policies,” Mitchell said. “That’s something that wouldn’t have existed at, say, Columbia. Columbia has their equivalent of the Regents (which) is a board of trustees, and it’s a private institution, so they can make whatever decisions they want and they’re not running for anything.”
The university’s obligations extend beyond education, as UCLA’s use of public funds – including from California taxpayers – makes it “responsible to the people of California,” Yaroslavsky said.
Emerson said he believes the university is currently “subject to the whims of an arbitrary government,” adding that UCLA could be at risk of additional funding cuts in the future.
He added that he believes the Trump administration is suspending UCLA’s grants as a tool to influence the university to follow its ideological preferences in a variety of policy areas – an action he said has bigger implications than addressing antisemitism.
Beyond the $1 billion, the settlement would also require UCLA to add two more roles – a resolution monitor and new senior administrator – to oversee the university and its compliance with anti-discrimination laws. It would also require Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center and the David Geffen School of Medicine to stop providing gender-affirming care, prohibit overnight demonstrations and discontinue race-based and ethnicity-based scholarships.
Yaroslavsky, a former member of the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors, also said UCLA is a “huge economic engine” for LA County – especially given that it is one of its top employers – and that changes to its operations would be felt across LA. UCLA is the one of five largest employers in the county, according to its website.
Emerson said the funding freeze will impact the employment of lab personnel and other staff positions. He added that he believes the effects will also be felt in student services and educational resources, which will likely impact the quality of students’ lives on campus.
“We are a university that explicitly is meant to serve the public of the state of California, as well as as our students and the national community more broadly, and so for the government to deploy its resources to try to undermine the really essential democratic function of the university is really contrary to our to our constitutional system,” Emerson said.
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