Trump demands US$1 billion from University of California over UCLA protests

LOS ANGELES: President Donald Trump demanded a massive US$1 billion fine from the prestigious University of California system on Friday (Aug 8) 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 on Friday 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."

Asked about Trump's fine during a press conference on Friday, California Governor Gavin Newsom - who sits on the UC's board - said "we'll sue" and accused the president of trying to silence academic freedom.

"He has threatened us through extortion with a billion dollar fine unless we do his bidding," Newsom said, crediting the UC system as "one of the reasons California is the tentpole of the US economy, one of the reasons we have more scientists, engineers, more Nobel laureates, than any other state in this nation".

Media reports suggest the government wants the money in installments 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 among 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 also 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, drawing criticism from Newsom.

"We will not be complicit in this kind of attack on academic freedom, or on this extraordinary public institution. We are not like some of those other institutions that have followed a different path," Newsom said.

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 in January.

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.