A coalition of California’s leading Jewish groups has come out against the Trump administration’s recent demand that the University of California, Los Angeles pay $1 billion to resolve federal antisemitism allegations.
The proposed $1 billion settlement “does not make Jewish students safer,” the Jewish Public Affairs Committee of California argued Tuesday.
JPAC’s statement comes days after the school said it was reviewing the Trump administration’s offer. The government is pressuring UCLA to accept the payout in order to unfreeze more than $500 million in federal funding for medical and science research.
A $1 billion settlement for the public university would dwarf the settlements that other schools, including Columbia and Brown, have reached to resolve their own antisemitism claims. Columbia has pledged to pay $220 million to the government, while Brown landed on $50 million. High-profile negotiations with Harvard remain ongoing, with the university reportedly balking at a $500 million demand.
In recent weeks, UCLA reached a settlement with Jewish students who had sued over claims the university allowed antisemitism to fester during pro-Palestinian protests over the war in Gaza. Part of the $6.13 million settlement includes a university pledge of $2.33 million to support Jewish groups including Hillel at UCLA and the Anti-Defamation League.
University leaders had hoped this settlement, and its other pledges to curb campus antisemitism, would end pressure from the Trump administration for further concessions, according to the Los Angeles Times. Instead, the federal government soon froze over half a billion dollars in research grants to strong-arm the university to resolve other pending investigations, including ones related to race-based hiring and transgender student athletes.
JPAC acknowledged that UCLA “has faced serious antisemitic incidents” but said the Trump demand would not help resolve them.
“It will drive a wedge between the Jewish community and other vulnerable groups that are harmed,” the group added. “And as a public institution, such a settlement would ironically divert public funds from other initiatives, including those that combat antisemitism and hate.”
A lobbying group that advocates for Jewish interests at the state capital, JPAC comprises 39 Jewish groups from across the ideological spectrum including the Anti-Defamation League; various local federations and Jewish community relations councils; the Holocaust Museum LA; progressive Jewish social justice groups; Hadassah; and the Simon Wiesenthal Center.
JPAC has lobbied to curb antisemitism and what it describes as anti-Israel sentiment at several of its state’s educational institutions in recent years, including major pushes against the state’s K-12 ethnic studies curriculum.
Its opposition to the Trump proposal is a further sign of growing Jewish disillusionment with the president’s aggressive approach to campus issues, which have drawn broad scrutiny as they have extracted large concessions from leading universities.
JPAC’s statement does not mention Trump by name.
JPAC noted that UCLA had “taken steps to counter antisemitism and ensure the safety and inclusion of Jewish students and faculty.” The Jewish groups singled out the university’s recent hiring of a new chancellor, Julio Frenk, who is Jewish and has pledged to take more active steps to combat antisemitism on campus. (Frenk replaced Gene Block, who is also Jewish.)
Trump has taken particular aim at California and Los Angeles with his policies, including his efforts to deport undocumented immigrants. He and California Gov. Gavin Newsom, a Democrat, are in court this week over Newsom’s challenge of his decision to deploy the National Guard to arrest immigrants in Los Angeles.
Newsom has blasted Trump’s UCLA demand as “extortion,” vowing not to pay it.
“This isn’t about protecting Jewish students — it’s a billion-dollar political shakedown from the pay-to-play president,” Newsom’s office wrote in a post Friday.
