UCLA Chancellor Julio Frenk said the school shouldn’t allow the Trump administration to determine how it operates as the school tries to restore $580 million in federal funding, Politico reported.
Frenk made the comments at a virtual event hosted by Jews United for Democracy & Justice as the Trump administration has demanded $1 billion and reforms on campus before it restores the funding, according to Politico.
The chancellor, who took over in January, said there are “red lines we cannot cross,” including “no government interference with decisions on who we hire — typically our faculty — who we admit as students, and what we teach and do research on.”
“That’s the core of academic freedom,” Frenk said.
As part of a settlement agreement obtained by Politico, the school would have to eliminate scholarships based on race and ethnicity, along with faculty programs that incentivize hiring based on race, gender or ethnicity. The administration also wants UCLA to stop using any proxies for race-based admissions.
Frenk admitted the university must do a better job of combating antisemitism on campus.
“Cutting funding for life-saving and life-transforming research doesn’t address the problem of antisemitism,” Frenk said. “We believe in talking and trying to make our case, where we try to demonstrate that we are serious about fighting antisemitism, that suspending research is not a way to deal with that problem.”
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