The University of California president on Wednesday said Trump administration grant suspensions at UCLA total $584 million, cuts that would be a “death knell” to medical, science and energy research and have spurred negotiations with federal officials.
The figure represents more than half of the direct and indirect payments UCLA receives for federal grants and contracts each year — and is more than twice the amount of cash-flow initially thought to be suspended when details first came out last week about federal agencies freezing campus grants over allegations of antisemitism.
“This week, the University of California responded to the U.S. Department of Justice’s letters regarding Title VI and Title VII investigations at UCLA, agreeing to engage in dialogue with the federal administration,” UC President James B. Milliken said in a statement Wednesday. Milliken said the the goal of negotiations was for all “suspended and at-risk federal funding restored to the university as soon as possible.”
Parts of federal civil rights law, Title VI and Title VII, prohibit discrimination based upon race, sex and national origin or shared ancestry, including Jewish and Israeli identity.
Milliken, who assumed the top UC post on Friday, struck a firm tone in his message.
“These cuts do nothing to address antisemitism,” Milliken wrote. “Moreover, the extensive work that UCLA and the entire University of California have taken to combat antisemitism has apparently been ignored. The announced cuts would be a death knell for innovative work that saves lives, grows our economy, and fortifies our national security. It is in our country’s best interest that funding be restored.”
The grant suspensions affecting research into areas including neuroscience, clean energy and cancer, came after the Justice Department and U.S. Atty. Gen. Pam Bondi said on July 28 that UCLA would pay a “heavy price” for acting with “deliberate indifference” to the civil rights of Jewish and Israeli students who complained of antisemitic incidents since Oct. 7, 2023. The date marks when Hamas attacked Israel, which led to Israel’s war in Gaza. In spring 2024, pro-Palestinian demonstrators erected an encampment on Royce Quad and demanded that UC divest from weapons and technology companies with ties to the war.
The Justice Department had given UCLA until Aug. 5 to indicate whether it would negotiate over those findings. Otherwise, a letter to UC said the Trump administration would sue by Sept. 2. That letter was sent just two days before the National Science Foundation, National Institutes of Health and the Department of Energy began notifying UCLA Chancellor Julio Frenk that vast parts of the university’s research enterprise must come to a halt.
In total, at least 800 grants were frozen.
The Times first reported the decision to negotiate with the federal government on Tuesday, citing UC sources who were not authorized to speak publicly.
In addition to accusing UCLA of violating the rights of Jewish students, the Trump administration has alleged the campus illegally used race in admissions and let transgender players compete on sports teams that match their gender identity.
The allegations are similar to those lobbed against Harvard, Brown, Columbia and other Ivy League universities. Brown and Columbia recently came to sweeping deals with the federal government to restore hundreds of millions in federal research funding.
In Brown’s case, the university will also pay $50 million to the state to be used toward workforce development programs. Columbia said it would pay more than $200 million to the federal government. Both schools also agreed to other conditions, including sharing data on admissions with the Trump administration.
On Wednesday, Milliken made no mention of a financial payout from UC or other potential terms of an agreement with Trump.
Experts say any payment would be a political liability for the university and state leaders in deep-blue California, where Trump’s policies are highly unpopular. Depending on the cost, a payout could also be a financial burden for a university system that is already facing a hiring freeze, budget squeezes, deferred state funding and scattered layoffs.
In a campus letter Wednesday, Frenk, who has challenged the idea that grant cuts are an appropriate response to allegations of antisemitism, said the suspensions, if they last, would be “devastating for UCLA and for Americans across the nation.”
The cuts amount to a “loss for Americans across the nation whose work, health and future depend on our groundbreaking research and scholarship,” he said.
“We are doing everything we can to protect the interests of faculty, students and staff — and to defend our values and principles. The UC Board of Regents and the UC Office of the President are providing counsel as we actively evaluate our best course of action.”
