While the UC system may be giving in on Trump’s attempt to turn the University of California into Trump U, students and faculty are taking up the fight, and have sued the administration to stop the university's defunding and blacklisting of activists.
The Trump administration has spent the better part of this year openly at war with universities and claiming that their Gaza protests are antisemitic and that their DEI programs are discriminating against white kids. That fight spread to the University of California (UC) school system in March, when Trump went after UC Berkeley and UCLA, claiming their campus protests constituted antisemitism
Things came to a boil last week when UC Berkeley handed over the names of 160 students and faculty who were accused of antisemitism. But UCLA has certainly taken the brunt of the financial penalties, being fined $1.2 billion, and having about $584 million in federal medical research grants to UCLA frozen.
Now, a coalition of UC faculty, staff and students are fighting back in ways their administrators are not. The LA Times reports that 21 UC-affiliated unions and faculty groups have sued the Trump administration to stop the funding cuts and purges, alleging that the Trump administration is trying to exert “ideological dominance” over the UC system.
“We will not stand by as the Trump administration tries to destroy one of the largest public university higher education systems in the country and bludgeons academic freedom at the University of California, the heart of the revered free speech movement,” American Association of University Professors president Todd Wolfson said in a statement to the Times. That association is among the 21 groups bringing the lawsuit.
UCLA Faculty Association president Anna Markowitz added to the Times, "We're doing this because the UC administration has not yet.”
The White House responded to the lawsuit to Reuters, calling the plaintiffs "victimhood-seeking professors," and claiming the administration is just trying to curtail "unreasonable overhead fees.”
The UC system itself is not party to the lawsuit, and to their credit, they are at least thus far refusing to shell out the $1.2 billion. UC spokesperson Stett Holbrook said in a statement to CNN, “Federal cuts to research funding threaten lifesaving biomedical research, hamper US economic competitiveness and jeopardize the health of Americans who depend on the University’s cutting-edge medical science and innovation.”
It’s pretty obvious the Trump administration is just trying to bully universities into banning Gaza protests, the teaching of climate issues, and any DEI programs they might still have. Of course, none of this is related to medical research, federal grants for which are the cudgel Trump is currently using.
The suit was filed in federal court in the Northern District of California, based in San Francisco, so we'll have a front row seat for these legal proceedings.
Image: Campanile on the University of California in Berkeley Campus (Getty Images)
