In direct response to a directive from the Trump administration that institutions participating in boycotts would not be eligible for federal medical and science research grants, the University of California announced on Wednesday that student governments and all other university entities are prohibited from boycotting Israel.
UC President Michael Drake informed campus leaders in a letter to chancellors that it was against university policy to boycott businesses because of their ties to a certain nation. Drake claimed that current laws mandate competitive bidding for university contracts, even though UC does not currently have an anti-boycott rule in place. Additionally, UC legal standards, which explicitly state that boycotts of other countries are prohibited, must be followed by campus student governments in order to maintain good business practices.
All campuses, medical facilities, the division of Agriculture and Natural Resources, and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory are subject to the policies.
Since student organizations do not speak for entire campuses, they are granted more freedom in their financial and political choices, hence the anti-boycott letter does not apply to them. Their budgets are likewise modest. However, some professional school governments, including those at law schools, which are officially acknowledged by chancellors as sanctioned student governments, may be impacted by the letter.
The institution has consistently opposed the anti-Israel Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions campaign, and Drake’s notice expands on that. The movement’s goal of cutting off financial investments and intellectual collaborations with Israel and Israeli businesses has led to accusations of antisemitism. It reached its zenith among student governments and pro-Palestinian camp sympathizers on UC campuses last year.
The letter comes as UC is being investigated system-wide by the Trump administration for allegations of antisemitic employment discrimination, and a federal task force on antisemitism is investigating UC Berkeley and UC Los Angeles at the campus level. The task force has also revoked billions of dollars in funding from prestigious universities like Columbia and Harvard.
California
In the midst of Trump administration budget cuts, probes, and criticism of diversity initiatives, UCLA Chancellor Julio Frenk, who took office on Thursday, discussed the condition of higher education and his goals for the university in an interview with The Times.
The National Science Foundation and the Department of Health and Human Services warned all grantees that federal money were at risk due to the anti-Israel acts, and the UC anti-boycott message applies to protests that target any country.
The National Institutes of Health, which is under the direction of HHS, provided $2.6 billion to all campuses last academic year and is the biggest source of federal money for UC research. With $524 million in 2024, the NSF was the second-largest federal funding source.
Since the Trump administration started cutting hundreds of millions of dollars in financing and research support, which includes overhead payments for contracts that are being contested in many federal court cases, the numbers have drastically decreased.
The government would not give money to colleges that support diversity, equity, and inclusion, according to HHS and NSF guidelines on boycotts against Israel. The university system has mostly maintained its diversity-related procedures, even if UC has stopped some of them, such as requiring diversity statements from faculty employment applications. It has defended its outreach initiatives to attract academics and students from a variety of racial backgrounds.
According to Drake, the need of university entities to manage their financial affairs in a way that complies with existing law and university policy is separate from the right of people and groups to voice their opinions on public issues. The rights of students, teachers, and staff to voice their opinions as well as the university’s duty to prevent its units from financially boycotting businesses connected to a specific nation are both reaffirmed in this letter.
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Trump’s redesigned National Science Foundation is accused in the lawsuit of enforcing ideology and universal budget cuts at the expense of economic and scientific progress.
Undergraduate and graduate student government organizations, which have occasionally taken pride in adopting stances that differ from those of the administration, may oppose the proposal.
Administrators briefed UC Davis undergraduate Aditi Hariharan, president of the UC Student Association, on the boycott prohibition in recent weeks, and she expressed her disagreement with it.
In an interview conducted before to the letter’s distribution, Hariharan stated that students already have little say in how the university operates and that student government is one of the few venues where they can truly become involved and have their thoughts heard. Students on all UC campuses are represented by her organization. However, this undermines students’ support for having a voice in their schools and the ability to elect their own representatives.
Boycott efforts among student governments have been successful, despite UC administrators’ strong opposition to requests from campus activists to remove endowments at the campus and systemic levels from links to Israel or weapons corporations involved in the Gaza War. A lot of people supported BDS last year and promised not to use goods from companies on a boycott list for doing business in Israeli-occupied Palestinian lands, nor to support or encourage pro-Israel speakers and activities.
For instance, last year, graduate and undergraduate student organizations at UCLA enacted legislation against boycotting Israel. The student government pledged to discourage funds from being used to support Israel and accused it of genocide, ethnic cleansing, and apartheid.
Drake’s criticism of boycotts does not apply to BDS-supporting university organizations like Students for Justice in Palestine and Jewish Voice for Peace. That’s because UC campuses view those groups as registered campus organizations, which means they have more freedom to conduct political action on matters that affect their members. They are not the same as officially recognized student governments, which represent large segments of the student body in concerns of campus governance.
Two groups at UCLA were expelled this year, while numerous other university Students for Justice in Palestine groups have been suspended or banned.
California
Antiwar demonstrations and worries about anti-Muslim and anti-Jewish prejudice on campus persist nearly six months after vigilantes broke into a pro-Palestinian camp at UCLA. Two distinct faculty task forces have reached differing results in their attempts to resolve the problems.
Drake’s message may have an impact on student governments at the graduate school level, where boycotts have generated controversy.
After the Law Student Association passed a boycott resolution against Israel in March, which included a restriction on hosting pro-Israel speakers, UC Davis banned the organization and took control of its $40,000 budget. At the time, the university claimed that the group had broken a rule requiring student governments to assist student organizations and activities financially and in other concrete ways, regardless of their opinions.
Drake’s letter seems to indicate that the Davis boycott was against UC-wide policies as well.
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