President Donald Trump demanded a large $1 billion superb from the distinguished College of California system on Friday because the administration pushed its claims of antisemitism in UCLA’s response to 2024 scholar protests associated to Gaza.
The determine, which is 5 instances the sum Columbia College agreed to pay to settle comparable federal accusations of antisemitism, would “utterly devastate” the UC public college system, a senior official mentioned.
President James Milliken, who oversees the ten campuses that make up the College of California system, together with Los Angeles-based UCLA, mentioned managers had obtained the $1 billion demand on Friday and had been reviewing it.
“As a public college, we’re stewards of taxpayer assets and a cost of this scale would utterly devastate our nation’s biggest public college system in addition to inflict nice hurt on our college students and all Californians,” he mentioned.
“People throughout this nice nation depend on the very important work of UCLA and the UC system for applied sciences and medical therapies that save lives, develop the US financial system, and shield our nationwide safety.”
Requested about Trump’s superb throughout a press convention on Friday, California Governor Gavin Newsom — who sits on the UC’s board — mentioned “we’ll sue” and accused the president of making an attempt to silence tutorial freedom.
“He has threatened us by extortion with a billion greenback superb until we do his bidding,” Newsom mentioned, crediting the UC system as “one of many causes California is the tentpole of the US financial system, one of many causes we have now extra scientists, engineers, extra Nobel laureates, than some other state on this nation.”
Media stories counsel the federal government needs the cash in installments and is demanding the college additionally pay $172 million to a claims fund to compensate Jewish college students and others affected by alleged discrimination.
The UC system, with faculties which can be constantly ranked among the many greatest public universities in america, is already grappling with the Trump administration’s more-than half-billion greenback freeze on medical and science grants at UCLA alone.
The transfer seems to observe an identical playbook the White Home used to extract concessions from Columbia College, and can be making an attempt to make use of to get Harvard College to bend.
Columbia’s settlement features a pledge to obey guidelines barring it from taking race into consideration in admissions or hiring, amongst different concessions, drawing criticism from Newsom.
“We won’t be complicit in this type of assault on tutorial freedom, or on this extraordinary public establishment. We aren’t like a few of these different establishments which have adopted a distinct path,” Newsom mentioned.
Professional-Palestinian protests rocked dozens of US campuses in 2024, with police crackdowns and mob violence erupting over scholar encampments, from Columbia to UCLA, with then-president Joe Biden saying “order should prevail.”
Universities have been in Trump’s sights since he returned to the White Home in January.
His Make America Nice Once more (MAGA) motion views academia as elite, overly liberal and hostile to the type of ethno-nationalism widespread amongst Trump supporters.
AFP
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