The Trump administration is pushing the University of California-Los Angeles to enter a $1 billion settlement that would resolve alleged civil rights violations, restore hundreds of millions of dollars of frozen federal research grants, and force the school to adopt major changes to how it operates.
The proposed agreement is certain to be subject to intense negotiations between the University of California and the White House. The administration’s opening demand marks a major effort to expand the scope of a monthslong political and policy offensive against higher education institutions — this time against a flagship campus at one of the country’s largest public university systems.
UCLA is at risk of losing more than half a billion dollars in federal research funds as the Trump administration continues to pressure the school to address allegations of antisemitism on campus.
Under the terms of the administration’s proposal, UCLA would pay the money in installments over three years and put another $172 million into a fund to pay legal claims made against it, according to a person familiar with the matter and a draft of the proposal viewed by POLITICO.
The proposal outlines a pitch to transform UCLA’s hiring practices and campus climate, plus its athletics and medical programs. It would require the university to designate a senior administrator responsible for reviewing UCLA’s policies and programs for diversity, equity and inclusion. That would include hiring practices, campus expression and anti-discrimination policies.
“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,” said James Milliken, who recently took over as president of the University of California system, in a statement that acknowledged the university had received the $1 billion settlement proposal from the Justice Department on Friday.
The outlines of the proposed settlement were first reported by CNN.
The settlement demand stems from tumultuous, sometimes violent demonstrations and protests against Israel’s war against Hamas that consumed the campus. The administration alleges that university officials did not protect Jewish students and faculty from discrimination by pro-Palestinian protesters.
The proposed agreement suggests strict limits on campus protests, including prohibitions on overnight demonstrations and requirements that mask-wearing demonstrators remove their face coverings and present identification to campus personnel upon request.
It also demands the university scrap scholarships that are based on race or ethnicity, and eliminate faculty programs that provide incentives for hiring candidates based on race, gender or ethnicity. And in provisions similar to those reached in recent settlements with Columbia University and Brown University in July, the Trump administration is demanding UCLA halt the use of proxies for race in their admissions process — and provide access to admissions and hiring data, including test scores, grade point averages and the race of applicants.
Colleges have been barred from considering race in admissions since 2023, when the Supreme Court gutted decades of precedent that previously allowed institutions to factor race into their decisions in a narrowly tailored manner. But Trump is forcing colleges and universities to disclose more student admissions data as the White House seeks to crack down on the use of race in the higher education application process.
The administration also proposes that UCLA conduct a survey to evaluate the campus climate for Jewish students.
Earlier this week, UCLA officials announced the Trump administration was withholding $584 million in research funds.
That sum was far more than what was initially estimated when the Justice Department announced last week it was investigating the school for violations of civil rights laws stemming from allegations it has failed to protect Jewish students and faculty from antisemitism.
