The Los Angeles Instances acquired its palms on the 28-page letter that the Trump administration despatched to the College of California, Los Angeles and it’s precisely as Y I Ok E S as you may need anticipated.
So as to settle no matter imprecise claims of antisemitism or racism the administration has ginned up as an excuse to withhold $500 million in funding, UCLA is meant to pay the administration a nice of $1 billion, payable in 5 yearly installments of $200 million, and pay an extra $172,000 for alleged civil rights violations.
If you happen to’re considering that the mathematics doesn’t fairly add up right here, wait till you hear the remainder of it.
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In addition to the absurd demand that UCLA pay over twice the quantity that the federal government is illegally withholding, the administration additionally desires full management over the college. That’s not an exaggeration. Right here’s a smattering:
No international college students with “anti-Western” views will be admitted
Demographic information for all hires and college students damaged down by race, coloration, GPA, and efficiency on standardized exams
Declare publicly that transgender individuals’s identities are not acknowledged
Cease all gender-affirming take care of minors at UCLA medical amenities
Give the federal government entry to actually all the things: “all UCLA staff, employees, facilities, documents, and data related to the agreement” except it’s coated by attorney-client privilege.
Have you ever seen sufficient? How about this: UCLA can be imagined to pay for all of this, together with the surface monitor who will get to hover over the college and make sure that it stays in compliance with the administration’s bigoted worldview.
One of many issues the Los Angeles Instances report made clear is that the doc was put collectively on the fly. It references the “president” of UCLA, which isn’t a factor, and one of many medical amenities referred to within the letter is definitely at Northwestern College—which is in Illinois.
A lot of the language seems to be the identical as within the “settlements” with Columbia and Brown Universities, which type of provides the sport away about simply how extortion-y this entire scheme is. If the administration is mainly slicing and pasting the identical phrases into a number of faculty settlements, that’s probably not reflective of an precise investigation of the person faculties.
So, UCLA will get the identical bootstrapping that the administration is making an attempt with all the colleges it’s attacking. The preliminary subject is normally alleged antisemitism, although generally the administration spices issues up and accuses faculties of racism for having any range initiatives. However as soon as these sham investigations get began, additionally they by some means at all times land on demanding that the college comply with Trump’s anti-trans agenda.
That fully labored at Brown, which agreed to strip transgender swimmer Lia Thomas of her titles and data in order that cis swimmers might get participation trophies. It’s actually completely unhinged that the president of america introduced the total weight of the federal authorities to bear on a serious American college as a result of Riley Gaines grew to become a full-time skilled transphobe after tying with Thomas for fifth place on the 2022 NCAA Championships.
In the meantime, UCLA isn’t the one California faculty the administration has in its sights. The College of California, Berkeley simply turned over a listing of 160 names of college, employees, and college students to the administration as individuals with a “potential connection to reports of alleged antisemitism.” Not one of the individuals on the record have been informed what these allegations have been, and the college didn’t inform these people till two weeks after giving the names to the federal government.
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So to recap: proposed “fines” which are double what the federal government is withholding in funding; calls for to include xenophobia into admissions; instructions that the precise existence of transgender individuals be denied, which is a little bit of an issue since California legislation explicitly protects transgender individuals from discrimination. This assault on greater training isn’t going to finish except the Supreme Court docket steps in and stops it, and let’s face it—it’s actually unlikely they are going to be using to the rescue any time quickly.
