\n<\/p>\n
The Trump administration demanded that UCLA pay $1.2\u00a0billion and restrict student freedoms.<\/p>\n
Juliana Yamada\/Los Angeles Times\/Getty Images<\/p>\n
The details of the Trump administration\u2019s demands on the University of California, Los Angeles\u2014in addition to the previously reported $1.2\u00a0billion payout the federal government asked for\u2014have finally been revealed. A lawsuit by UC faculty unions forced the higher ed system to release a copy of a draft resolution agreement, shedding light on the terms UC was first faced with nearly three months ago.<\/p>\n
The Trump administration has demanded, among other things, that UCLA not enroll \u201cforeign students likely to engage in anti-Western, anti-American, or antisemitic disruptions or harassment.\u201d In the same paragraph, the proposed resolution agreement says UCLA would have to \u201csocialize international students to the norms of a campus dedicated to free inquiry and open debate.\u201d <\/p>\n
The federal government also demanded that UCLA ban overnight campus demonstrations and mandate that masked campus protesters reveal their identities when asked. <\/p>\n
Multiple provisions aim to limit transgender individuals\u2019 rights. The document demands that UCLA\u2019s medical school and affiliated hospitals stop \u201cperforming hormonal interventions and \u2018transgender\u2019 surgeries\u201d on anyone under 18; stop allowing transgender women to play on women\u2019s sports teams; strip records, awards and other recognition from transgender women athletes; and send personal apologies to the cisgender women who placed lower than trans athletes. <\/p>\n
California voters banned affirmative action in public education nearly 30\u00a0years ago, but the demand letter suggests the Trump administration doesn\u2019t think UCLA has complied. It would require UCLA to bar providing \u201cinformation about candidates\u2019 race, sex, ethnicity, or other protected characteristics to faculty or other UCLA personnel with decision-making authority over hiring, retention, promotion or tenure.\u201d <\/p>\n
Other provisions target affirmative action in hiring and student admissions, including a line that says, \u201cUCLA shall discontinue race- and ethnicity-based scholarships.\u201d The proposed agreement says \u201cproxies used to effectuate race-based or sex-based outcomes\u201d aren\u2019t allowed in selecting for fellowship programs and also bans the use of such undefined proxies in hiring and admissions. <\/p>\n
The document\u2019s release comes after UC said in early August that it would negotiate with the federal government, citing the estimated $584\u00a0million in funding that at least three different federal agencies had announced they were suspending. That funding freeze followed a July\u00a029 letter to UC from the Department of Justice, which said its months-long investigations across the system had so far concluded that in its response to a pro-Palestinian protest encampment in spring 2024, UCLA violated the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment and Title\u00a0VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.<\/p>\n
It was yet another example of the Trump administration accusing a selective university of tolerating antisemitism and cutting off hundreds of millions of federal dollars. But, unlike Harvard and Columbia Universities, UCLA is a public institution, and its targeting by the federal government represents an expansion of the administration\u2019s campaign to overhaul higher ed. <\/p>\n
Last week, the University of Virginia became the first known public institution to settle with the administration over discrimination allegations. That settlement didn\u2019t require a payout, but among other things, UVA committed to not use proxies for race; to end all diversity, equity and inclusion programming; and to prohibit trans athletes from participating in sports.<\/p>\n
Media earlier reported some of the administration\u2019s demands on UCLA, but university officials didn\u2019t make the details public until Friday, when a lawsuit by the UCLA Faculty Association and Council of UC Faculty Associations forced them to.<\/p>\n
\u201cAccession to these demands would be to undermine everything that has made the UC the successful engine of social mobility and economic might that it has been for our state,\u201d Anna Markowitz, president of the UCLA Faculty Association, wrote in an email. \u201cIt will harm undergraduate learning opportunities, and hamper UC\u2019s ability to be a scholarly leader on the international stage. It enshrines ideology at the heart of the institution rather than decades of empirical and scholarly understanding. We stand against this extortion effort.\u201d <\/p>\n
Markowitz said the \u201cUCLA FA and CUCFA have stood with our union colleagues in calling for no negotiations since the beginning.\u201d The university administration \u201cis under intense federal pressure,\u201d she said, and she urged them to resist\u2014\u201cparticularly because other faculty legal action has resulted in the restoration of nearly all of the temporarily suspended federal grants.\u201d <\/p>\n
Indeed, Stett Holbrook, a UC spokesperson, wrote in an email to Inside Higher Ed<\/em> Monday that \u201cas for terminated federal research funds, that figure is in the tens of millions\u201d\u2014a far cry from the August estimate of $584\u00a0million.<\/p>\n He provided a statement saying, \u201cUC has been clear it must evaluate its response to the administration\u2019s settlement proposal that, like all settlement communications, is confidential. As stated previously, the proposed $1.2\u00a0billion settlement payment alone would derail work that saves lives, grows our economy, and fortifies our national security. UC remains committed to protecting the mission, governance, and academic freedom of the University.\u201d<\/p>\n White House and DOJ officials didn\u2019t respond to requests for interviews Monday or answer written questions. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The Trump administration demanded that UCLA pay $1.2\u00a0billion and restrict student freedoms. Juliana Yamada\/Los Angeles Times\/Getty Images The details of the Trump administration\u2019s demands on the University of California, Los Angeles\u2014in addition to the previously reported $1.2\u00a0billion payout the federal government asked for\u2014have finally been revealed. A lawsuit by UC faculty unions forced the higher<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":30983,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[57],"tags":[18118,394,3201,17243,2481,1975],"class_list":{"0":"post-30982","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-education","8":"tag-1-2b","9":"tag-athlete","10":"tag-fine","11":"tag-nix","12":"tag-trans","13":"tag-wins"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30982","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=30982"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30982\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/30983"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=30982"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=30982"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=30982"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}