UC Berkeley and College Republicans settle free-speech case

"On the morning of Thursday, July 31, James B. Milliken was enjoying a round of golf at the remote Sand Hills club in Western Nebraska when his cellphone buzzed. Milliken was still days away from taking the helm of the sprawling University of California system, but his new office was on the line with disturbing news: The Trump administration was freezing hundreds of millions of dollars of research funding at UCLA, UC's biggest campus."

"The grant freeze was the latest salvo in the administration's broader campaign against elite universities, which it has pilloried as purveyors of antisemitism and woke indoctrination. Over the next four months, the Justice Department targeted UCLA with its full playbook for bringing colleges to heel, threatening it with multiple discrimination lawsuits, demanding more than $1 billion in fines and pressing for a raft of changes on the conservative wish list for overhauling higher education."

"In the months since Milliken's aborted golf game, much has been written about the Trump administration's efforts to impose its will on UCLA, part of the nation's largest and most prestigious public university system. But an investigation by ProPublica and The Chronicle of Higher Education, based on previously unreported documents and interviews with dozens of people involved, reveals the extent to which the government violated legal and procedural norms to gin up its case against the school."

James B. Milliken received word that the Trump administration had frozen hundreds of millions of dollars in research funding at UCLA days before he took leadership of the University of California system. The grant freeze formed part of a broader campaign targeting elite universities as purveyors of antisemitism and so-called woke indoctrination. Over the following months, the Justice Department threatened UCLA with multiple discrimination lawsuits, demanded over $1 billion in fines, and pushed extensive conservative policy changes. Previously unreported documents and interviews show that the government violated legal and procedural norms in assembling its case against UCLA.

Read at www.berkeleyside.org