LOS ANGELES – UCLA said Thursday it was notified that the prime minister, known as “American Loss,” is losing federal research funds for anti-Semitism, allegedly a move.
“UCLA has been notified that the federal government has suspended certain research funding to UCLA through the control of the National Science Foundation (NSF), the National Institutes of Health (NIH), and other agencies,” Prime Minister Julio Frenck said in a message to the campus community. How much he didn’t say.
“This is not just a loss for researchers who rely on critical grants. This is the loss for Americans across the country, whose work, health and future relies on the groundbreaking work we do,” he writes.
The Trump administration has tried to put pressure on and retaliate universities across the country following student protests on university campuses over the war in Gaza. Some Republicans in Congress have called protests and some of the acts anti-Semitics.
Frenk said in his message that the federal government cited anti-Semitism as a reason for the loss of funds.
“In our notification, the federal government argues for anti-Semitism and prejudice. This widespread penalty in reimbursing life-saving research has nothing to address suspicious discrimination,” he wrote.
UCLA announced Tuesday that it has agreed to pay $6 million to resolve a lawsuit allegedly causing discrimination by Jewish students and faculty members. The lawsuit, filed in June 2024, accused the university of not taking action when Palestinian protesters set up camp on campus that spring.
Frenk writes in his message to the Bruin community, as the UCLA community is known, that anti-Semitism has no place on campus, but there is room for improvement. He said the university has taken steps to counter it and introduced a policy on student protest.
The National Science Foundation and the National Institutes of Health did not immediately respond to requests for comment late Thursday.
Frenk highlighted the important work UCLA has done. This includes helping to create what will become the Internet, with researchers saying, “We are currently building new technologies that will fuel the entire industry and help protect soldiers.”
President Donald Trump pledged during his campaign to crack down on the university in response to student protests against the war in Gaza that Israel launched against Hamas after Hamas attacked on October 7, 2023.
Currently there is a humanitarian crisis in Gaza, and this week the UN said it is increasing its integrated food security stage classification or evidence of worsening hunger. The IPC emphasized that the warning constitutes an alert and is not an official “hunger classification.”
Columbia University in New York City, one of the universities the Trump administration has targeted for anti-Semitism allegations, announced a settlement last week to restore federal cuts.
Brown University in Rhode Island said Wednesday it had reached an agreement with the federal government to restore funds. The agreement said it would resolve three reviews of Brown’s “compliance with federal non-discrimination obligations.”
