LOS ANGELES: President Donald Trump demanded a large US$1 billion fantastic from the distinguished College of California system on Friday (Aug 8) because the administration pushed its claims of antisemitism in UCLA’s response to 2024 pupil protests associated to Gaza.
The determine, which is 5 occasions the sum Columbia College agreed to pay to settle related federal accusations of antisemitism, would “utterly devastate” the UC public college system, a senior official mentioned.
President James Milliken, who oversees the ten campuses that make up the College of California system, together with Los Angeles-based UCLA, mentioned managers had acquired the US$1 billion demand on Friday and have been reviewing it.
“As a public college, we’re stewards of taxpayer assets and a fee of this scale would utterly devastate our nation’s biggest public college system in addition to inflict nice hurt on our college students and all Californians,” he mentioned.
“People throughout this nice nation depend on the important work of UCLA and the UC system for applied sciences and medical therapies that save lives, develop the US economic system, and defend our nationwide safety.”
Requested about Trump’s fantastic throughout a press convention on Friday, California Governor Gavin Newsom – who sits on the UC’s board – mentioned “we’ll sue” and accused the president of making an attempt to silence tutorial freedom.
“He has threatened us by extortion with a billion greenback fantastic until we do his bidding,” Newsom mentioned, crediting the UC system as “one of many causes California is the tentpole of the US economic system, one of many causes we have now extra scientists, engineers, extra Nobel laureates, than some other state on this nation”.
Media stories counsel the federal government needs the cash in installments and is demanding the college additionally pay US$172 million to a claims fund to compensate Jewish college students and others affected by alleged discrimination.
