Trump demands US$1b from University of California over pro-Palestinian UCLA protests

Nevin Al Sukari - Sana'a - Law enforcement officers stand guard at the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA), during a pro-Palestinian protest in Los Angeles May 2, 2024. — Reuters pic

LOS ANGELES, Aug 9 — President Donald Trump demanded a massive US$1 billion (RM4.24 billion) fine from the prestigious University of California system yesterday as the administration pushed its claims of antisemitism in UCLA’s response to 2024 student protests related to Gaza.

The figure, which is five times the sum Columbia University agreed to pay to settle similar federal accusations of antisemitism, would “completely devastate” the UC public university system, a senior official said. 

President James Milliken, who oversees the 10 campuses that make up the University of California system, including Los Angeles-based UCLA, said managers had received the US$1 billion demand yesterday and were reviewing it.

“As a public university, we are stewards of taxpayer resources and a payment of this scale would completely devastate our country’s greatest public university system as well as inflict great harm on our students and all Californians,” he said.

“Americans across this great nation rely on the vital work of UCLA and the UC system for technologies and medical therapies that save lives, grow the US economy, and protect our national security.”

Media reports suggest the government wants the money in instalments and is demanding the university also pay US$172 million to a claims fund to compensate Jewish students and others affected by alleged discrimination.

The UC system, with schools that are consistently ranked the best public universities in the United States, is already grappling with the Trump administration’s more-than half-billion dollar freeze on medical and science grants at UCLA alone.

The move appears to follow a similar playbook the White House used to extract concessions from Columbia University, and is trying to use to get Harvard University to bend.

Columbia’s agreement includes a pledge to obey rules barring it from taking race into consideration in admissions or hiring, among other concessions.

Pro-Palestinian protests rocked dozens of US campuses in 2024, with police crackdowns and mob violence erupting over student encampments, from Columbia to UCLA, with then-president Joe Biden saying “order must prevail.” 

Universities have been in Trump’s sights since he returned to the White House.

His Make America Great Again (MAGA) movement views academia as elite, overly liberal and hostile to the kind of ethno-nationalism popular among Trump supporters.

The US$1 billion demand of UCLA came the day after California Governor Gavin Newsom, who frequently spars with Trump, said the UC should not give in to the president’s demands.

“There’s right and wrong, and we’ll do the right thing,” said Newsom, who sits on the UC board.

“This is about our competitiveness. It’s about the fate and future of this country. It’s about our sovereignty. It’s about so much more than the temperament of an aggrieved individual who happens to currently be president of the United States,” he told reporters.

“I’ll do everything in my power to encourage them to do the right thing and not to become another law firm that bends on their knees, another company that sells their soul or another institution that takes a shortcut and takes the easy wrong versus the hard right.” — AFP