UCLA, a university in California, announced Thursday that it has received notification that it would no longer receive federal research funds due to allegations of antisemitism. The chancellor described this as “a loss for America.”
In a message to the campus community, university chancellor Julio Frenk announced that UCLA had received notification that the federal government, through the National Science Foundation (NSF), the National Institutes of Health (NIH), and other organizations, was suspending some of its research funding.
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The researchers who depend on essential funds are not the only ones who suffer from this. He added, “It is a loss for Americans nationwide whose future, health, and employment depend on the innovative work we do.”
The notification was made public as the Trump administration has attempted to exert pressure or take retaliatory action against colleges nationwide in response to student demonstrations against the war in Gaza on college campuses.
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The demonstrations and some of the behavior have been referred to as antisemitic by a number of Republican members of Congress.
According to Frenk’s address to the UCLA community, the federal government blamed the funding loss on antisemitism.
“The federal government cites bias and antisemitism as the causes in its notice to us. “Any alleged discrimination is not addressed by this extensive penalty of defunding life-saving research,” he said.
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On Tuesday, UCLA declared that school had reached a settlement of $6 million to resolve a discrimination case filed by a staff member and Jewish students. When pro-Palestinian demonstrators established camps on campus that spring, the institution was accused in the June 2024 lawsuit of doing nothing.
Although the UCLA community is aware that antisemitism has no place on campus, Frenk noted that there is always space for growth in his message to the Bruin community. According to him, the university has implemented policies regarding student protests and taken action to counteract them.
Requests for response late Thursday were not immediately answered by the National Institutes of Health or the National Science Foundation.
The amount of federal assistance that will be stopped was not specified in Frenkin’s statement to the university.
He cited UCLA’s significant contributions, such as its role in the development of the Internet, and said that scientists “are now building new technologies that could fuel entire industries and help safeguard our soldiers.”
In response to student protests over Israel’s war in Gaza, which Israel initiated against Hamas following the Hamas assaults on October 7, 2023, which attacked Israeli civilians, notably at a music festival, President Donald Trump promised throughout his campaign to crack down on universities.
The United Nations reported this week that the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification, or IPC, revealed growing indications of a deepening famine in Gaza, which is now experiencing a humanitarian crisis. The IPC made it clear that its notice was an alert rather than an official designation of famine.
Last week, Columbia University in New York City announced a settlement with the federal government in an attempt to restore reduced federal funds. Columbia University was one of the universities targeted by the Trump administration over accusations of antisemitism.
Rhode Island’s Brown University said on Wednesday that it and the federal government have come to an agreement to reinstate funding. According to the university, the agreement ends three evaluations of Brown’s adherence to the federal nondiscrimination requirements.
