LOS ANGELES — UCLA said Thursday that it has been notified that it is losing federal research funding over alleged antisemitism, a move the chancellor called “a loss for America.”
“UCLA received a notice that the federal government, through its control of the National Science Foundation (NSF), the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and other agencies, is suspending certain research funding to UCLA,” Chancellor Julio Frenk said in a message to the campus community. He did not say how much.
“This is not only a loss to the researchers who rely on critical grants. It is a loss for Americans across the nation whose work, health, and future depend on the groundbreaking work we do,” he wrote.
The Trump administration has sought to pressure or retaliate against universities across the country following student protests on college campuses about the war in Gaza. Some Republican members of Congress and others have called the protests and some of the conduct antisemitic.
Frenk said in his message that the federal government cited antisemitism as its reason for the loss of funding.
“In its notice to us, the federal government claims antisemitism and bias as the reasons. This far-reaching penalty of defunding life-saving research does nothing to address any alleged discrimination,” he wrote.
UCLA announced Tuesday that it has agreed to pay $6 million to settle a lawsuit that alleged discrimination, which was brought by Jewish students and a faculty member. The lawsuit, filed in June 2024, accused the university of failing to take action when pro-Palestinian protesters set up encampments on campus that spring.
Frenk wrote in the message to the Bruin community — as the UCLA community is known — that antisemitism has no place on campus but acknowledged room for improvement. He said the university has taken steps to combat it and put in place policies about student protests.
The National Science Foundation and the National Institutes of Health did not immediately respond to requests for comment late Thursday.
Frenk highlighted important work done by UCLA, which included helping create what would become the internet, and he said researchers “are now building new technologies that could fuel entire industries and help safeguard our soldiers.”
President Donald Trump pledged during his campaign to crack down on universities because of student protests against the war in Gaza, which Israel launched against Hamas after the Hamas attacks on Oct. 7, 2023, that targeted Israeli civilians, including at a music festival.
There is now a humanitarian crisis in Gaza, and this week the United Nations said its Integrated Food Security Phase Classification, or IPC, showed mounting evidence of a worsening famine. The IPC emphasized that its warning constituted an alert and was not a formal “famine classification.”
Columbia University in New York City, which was among the universities the Trump administration targeted over allegations of antisemitism, announced a settlement last week with the federal government in an effort to restore cut federal funding.
Brown University in Rhode Island said Wednesday that it reached an agreement with the federal government to restore funding. It said the agreement resolves three reviews of Brown’s “compliance with federal nondiscrimination obligations.”
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