Journalism of Courage
The University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) on Tuesday sued US President Donald Trump’s administration over the freezing of federal funds and other actions as it alleged that the federal government is using civil rights to wage a campaign against the university and undermine free speech, with an aim to stifle academic freedom.
The lawsuit filed on Tuesday by staff, student organizations, every labour union representing UCLA and faculty seeks to restrict the federal administration from using financial threats, which the university said is harmful and unlawful. The university also aims to restore its federal funding which has already been suspended by President Trump.
“(The administration) has attempted to implement a playbook to threaten colleges and universities,” said the coalition that has filed the lawsuit on Tuesday in the US District Court for the Northern District of California.
The lawsuit alleged that the threats by Trump administration were based on disdain for the institutions’ curriculum, expressive activity on campuses, and initiatives for diversity, equity and inclusion, Reuters reported.
The lawsuit by UCLA’s coalition comes weeks after the Trump administration froze federal funding of the university and fined it over $1.2 billion due to civil rights violations and allegedly allowing antisemitism on campus. UCLA was the first university that came under the crackdown of Trump’s education system over the widespread funding freeze.
Following in the footsteps of UCLA, the Trump administration implemented a federal funding freeze fully or partially against several elite private colleges, including Harvard, Brown and Columbia universities.
The lawsuit alleged, “The blunt cudgel the Trump administration has repeatedly employed in this attack on the independence of institutions of higher education has been the abrupt, unilateral, and unlawful termination of federal research funding on which those institutions and the public interest rely.”
The University of California operates one of the highest higher-education systems in the United States, with 10 main campuses and about 300,000 students and 265,000 staff and faculty, Reuters reported.
(with inputs from Reuters, AP)
