Given that federal agencies surprised the UCLA by freezing around $ 339 million in research subsidies, teachers, higher workers and students looked for details on what university – the first public higher education establishment targeted by President Trump – will do.
Will the UCLA dispute the federal government before the courts, will it negotiate and can we pay a significant fine or to draw on emergency reserves to support researchers? With more than a third of its federal funds and fixed contract funds, will the UCLA be forced to dismiss employees, as Columbia, Harvard and other private elite universities did?
While Trump is fighting in colleges, the administration accused the UCLA of illegally authorizing anti -Semitism, using the race in admission and letting transgender players compete in sports teams that correspond to their gender identity. Ivy League schools were also reproduced by the administration for their responses to Pro-Palestinian camps last year.
The senior administrators described the answers during a virtual town hall to the presence of around 3,000 teachers on Monday and also during meetings at the department level, notably at the Faculty of Medicine of the UCLA, which lost hundreds of subsidies from the National Institutes of Health.
But they warned that there were no final decisions.
“There is a period of time to resolve the questions that the government has for us,” said Marcia L. Smith, a associate vice-chancellier of the UCLA Research Administration, during the virtual town hall. Smith said that the leaders “prepared” to contact the NIH, the National Science Foundation and the Department of Energy – which froze around 800 subsidies over several days last week – “talk about the types of information they need to raise these suspensions”.
Smith said it was “highly hoped” that the UCLA “will find a solution”.
Unclear negotiations
There was no mention of the University of California to make a payment like Columbia, which agreed last month to a fine of more than $ 200 million as part of a sweeping agreement with Trump to restore suspended subsidies. UC as a system oversees federal relations for the UCLA and nine other campuses.
Speaking on the history of Times on Monday, three senior UC leaders echo a similar message: the UCLA will likely enter negotiations, but it is too early to determine the terms. Officials were not authorized to speak publicly about internal deliberations.
Nevertheless negotiations would not prevent a potential prosecution, they said.
“Each public institution in the country looks at us very carefully,” said Roger Wakimoto, UCLA vice-chancellor, Roger Wakimoto. He added later: “We are out of the door, fixing the pace.”
“It is not only a decision of the UCLA, our chancellor will certainly be intimately involved in the path to follow that we decide, but it will also involve the regents of the University of California,” said Wakimoto, as well as the new president of the UC James B. Milliken, who started the post on Friday.
Wakimoto and UCLA leaders also said that other UC campuses offered to help, including taking care of laboratory animals that may need help.
The Doj says the UCLA will pay the “heavy price”
The suspensions of the subsidy last week, affecting research on neuroscience, clean energy, cancer and other areas, intervened after the Ministry of Justice and the United States. General Pam Bondi said that the UCLA would pay a “heavy price” to act with “deliberate indifference” to the civil rights of Jewish and Israeli students who have complained of anti -Semitic incidents since October 7, 2023. It was at this moment that Hamas attacked Israel, which led to the Israel War in Gaza and the Prolesinian student on Royce.
The DoJ gave the UCLA until Tuesday to indicate that it would negotiate on these conclusions. Otherwise, a letter to UC said that the Trump administration would continue by September 2. This letter was sent only two days before the federal agencies began to inform the Chancellor of the UCLA Julio Frenk only large parts of the university research company must stop.
In the statements since last week, Frenk challenged the idea that the alleged anti -Semitism of the UCLA justifies subsidies.
“A radical penalty on vital research does not deal with any alleged discrimination … We have emergency plans in place and we do everything we can,” said Frenk without developing on the level.
In a video published Monday on social networks, Milliken did not deal directly with suspensions but largely mentioned the “challenges” facing universities.
“Higher education faces greater challenges and changes than to my career,” said Milliken. “At the same time, I know that our work is essential to improve life, strengthen the economy and provide wild health care, more than ever. The future of our state and our country and our world depend on prosperous, innovative and accessible universities. ”
The faculty demands an aggressive defense
Hundreds of teachers have their own ideas.
In a petition circulating on UCLA and UC campuses, the teachers ask the UC to further challenge the government. An increasing number has signed.
“We do not have to look at the illegitimate and bad requirements of the Trump administration … We demand in the strongest possible terms that the University of California demonstrates our strength as the largest university system in the world and rejects the malicious requirements of the Trump administration,” said the petition of the Faculty of the ASSN. On Monday afternoon, the petition collected more than 600 signatures, mainly UCLA teachers.
“We demand that the UC call these requirements as they are: efforts to erode the strength of American higher education. Each university that legitimizes attacks by the Trump administration against all our higher education institutions and which we must get up now. To protect our democracy, we have to protect ourselves against the threat against our campuses and our community, “he was able to fight against the threat against our campuses and our democracy,” he said.
He also made another suggestion: that the UC draws from billions of endowment funds without restriction to fill the gap left by suspended subsidies. The university leaders did not indicate publicly if it was on the table.
Carrie Bearden, professor at the Semel Institute for Neuroscience and human behavior and the Brain Research Institute, is one of those who signed. She is the director of a training subsidy of $ 2.36 million $ 2.36 million of $ 2.36 million who finances students who do neurogenetic research.
“This is an immediate and terrible impact on all trainees. We do not know what other funding will currently cover them,” said Bearden, who said that the teachers’ leaders have said that the leaders of the east coast of recent months.
Vivek Shetty, UCLA professor of oral surgery and maxillofacial and biomedical engineering, also had a subsidy of four years of $ 828,154. His, which had been renewed over 11 years, has focused on training digital health researchers, such as those who develop portable applications and devices to signal the irregular heart rate, direct daily diabetes control and provide remote medical care.
“The financing freezing endangers the very care that will protect us and our families tomorrow,” said Shetty, former president of the UCLA academic Senate. “Marine of these brilliant minds today, and we turn out a whole generation of rescue ideas. However, fierce its public objections, the University of California will probably acquiesce under Washington, painfully aware of the deep human and scientific costs of this severe decree. “