The California university UCLA said Thursday that it has been notified that it is losing federal research funding over alleged antisemtism, a move the chancellor called “a loss for America.”<\/p>\n
\u201cUCLA received a notice that the federal government, through its control of the National Science Foundation (NSF), the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and other agencies, is suspending certain research funding to UCLA,\u201d university Chancellor Julio Frenk said in a message to the campus community.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is not only a loss to the researchers who rely on critical grants. It is a loss for Americans across the nation whose work, health, and future depend on the groundbreaking work we do,\u201d he wrote.<\/p>\n
The announced notice comes as the Trump administration has sought to pressure or retaliate against universities across the country following student protests on college campuses about the war in Gaza. <\/p>\n
Some Republican members of Congress and others have called the protests and some of the conduct antisemitic. <\/p>\n
Frenk in his message to the UCLA community said that the federal government used antisemitism as its reason for the loss of funding.<\/p>\n
“In its notice to us, the federal government claims antisemitism and bias as the reasons. This far-reaching penalty of defunding life-saving research does nothing to address any alleged discrimination,” he wrote.<\/p>\n
UCLA announced Tuesday that it has agreed to pay $6 million to settle a lawsuit<\/a> that alleged discrimination, and which was brought by Jewish students and a faculty member. The lawsuit filed in June 2024 accused the university of failing to take action when pro-Palestinian protesters set up encampments on campus that spring.<\/p>\n Frenk wrote in the message to the Bruin community \u2014 as the UCLA community is known \u2014 that antisemitism has no place on campus but acknowledged room for improvement. He said that the university has taken steps to combat it, and put in place policies about student protests.<\/p>\n The National Science Foundation and the National Institutes of Health did not immediately respond to requests for comment late Thursday.<\/p>\n Frenk in his message to the university <\/a>did not say how much federal funding will be suspended. <\/p>\n He highlighted important work done by UCLA, which included helping to create what would become the Internet, and he said researchers “are now building new technologies that could fuel entire industries and help safeguard our soldiers.”<\/p>\n President Donald Trump during his campaign pledged to crack down on universities because of student protests against the war in Gaza, which Israel launched against Hamas after the Hamas attacks on Oct. 7, 2023, that targeted Israeli civilians, including at a music festival.<\/p>\n There is now a humanitarian crisis in Gaza, and this week the United Nations said<\/a> the U.N.’s Integrated Food Security Phase Classification, or IPC,showed mounting evidence of a worsening famine<\/a> there. The IPC emphasized that its warning constituted an alert and was not a formal \u201cfamine classification.\u201d<\/p>\n Columbia University in New York City was among the universities targeted by the Trump administration over allegations of antisemitism, and last week Columbia announced a settlement with the federal government<\/a> in an effort to restore cut federal funding.<\/p>\n