The bill is salty. The Public University of California announced on Friday, August 8 that the United States government demanded a monster fine of $ 1 billion for the Protal Manifestations of 2024 on Friday, August 8, a new offensive of the Donald Trump administration against higher education.
The amount represents almost five times what the Private University of New York Columbia agreed to pay at the end of July, more than $ 200 million, to resolve a dispute over anti -Semitism on its campus during the 2024 spring movement against the war fought by Israel in the Gaza Strip.
During the same period, the Campus of the University of California in Los Angeles (UCLA) had been the scene of clashes between protesters mobilized by the Palestinian cause and other counter-demons.
A “immense bad” for Californians
“As a public university, we depend on the taxpayer’s resources and a payment of this magnitude would completely destroy the best public university system in the country and make immense damage to our students and all Californians,” said the president of the University of California (UC), James Milliken, to the press on August 1.
According to this official who supervises ten campus, the most important of which in Los Angeles, in the collimator of the Trump administration, the university received the formal notice of the federal government on Friday.
$ 172 million in compensation
According to the media in California, the Trump government would also demand that the university pay $ 172 million to its Jewish students who have felt discriminated and intimidated during the movement of the campus 15 months ago.
The UC Network, located in the most populous and rich state in the country, is considered the best public higher education system in the United States, where the prestigious private universities are practicing prohibitive tariffs.
Questioned on Friday at a press conference, the Democratic governor of California, Gavin Newsom, who is at the Board of Directors of the UC, announced his intention to challenge this decision -making decision.
“We are going to bring a trial,” he said, accusing Trump of trying to make the academic freedom.
According to the elected official, the university system of his state constitutes “one of the reasons why California is the pillar of the US economy, one of the reasons why we have more scientists, engineers and winners of the Nobel Prize than any other state” in the country.
Mr. Milliken also stressed the “crucial work that UCLA and the UC network do in terms of technological and medical research, to save lives, grow the US economy and preserve national security.”
Increased pressure on American universities
Since his return to power on January 20, President Trump, an unwavering ally of Israel, has continued to accentuate pressures in universities.
In particular, more than $ 2.6 billion froze in research subsidies that were assigned to Harvard University and hundreds of millions for Columbia.
The latter sealed a financial agreement of 221 million dollars with the United States government at the end of July to end months of conflict, but experts denounced a “devastating precedent” in this authoritative authoritarian offensive against higher education in the United States.
The New York Times reported last week that a $ 500 million agreement was prepared with the oldest university in the country, Harvard.
Source: BFM TV
