President Trump wants to punish universities and make them cower to his will | Opinion
President Donald Trump’s cutoff of funds to universities, including UCLA, is blatantly illegal and unconstitutional. It is about inflicting great harm on universities, as evidenced by Trump’s statement that he would settle with UCLA for $1 billion. As Christopher Rufo, who has helped shape Trump’s policies on higher education, has stated, the goal is to make universities experience “existential terror” and put them in “deep recession.”
I am baffled why anyone would want to cut funding to universities for medical research from the National Institutes of Health and the National Science Foundation, nor can I fathom why someone wants to harm the world’s best university system and hand a great advantage to China, which is investing huge amounts in higher education.
But if the Trump administration is going to cut off funds for universities, they must do so in a lawful manner.
On Aug. 1, the Trump administration announced it was cutting off money to researchers at UCLA, totaling nearly $600 million in grants. This was done in brief letters with lists of grant recipients attached. There was not a semblance of due process.
A letter dated Aug. 1, 2025, from the head of the National Science Foundation to Dr. Julio Frenk, chancellor of UCLA, said that grants are being suspended because the university adhered to “illegal ... affirmative action” policies, failed to do enough to combat “antisemitism and bias” on campus and “discriminat[ed]” against women by allowing transgender individuals to compete in the school’s athletics program.
If the federal government is to cut off grants because the university discriminated, federal law is very specific as to the procedures that must be followed. A federal statute (42 U.S.C. 2000d-2) requires that the university be given notice and that there be a hearing before funds are suspended or terminated. There must be findings that the university acted illegally.
The law requires that both the Senate and the House of Representatives be notified 30 days before funds are cut off. And the law is clear that funds can be cut off only to specific programs that have been found to have discriminated. The Trump administration followed none of these requirements.
Moreover, the suspension of funds by the National Science Foundation violated a court order. In early June, a lawsuit was filed in federal district court in San Francisco on behalf of researchers throughout the University of California system. I am co-counsel in this lawsuit.
On June 23, Judge Rita Lin found that the termination of grants by three agencies — the National Science Foundation, the National Endowment of the Humanities and the Environmental Protection Agency — violated the law. Lin concluded that the mass termination of grants, without any individualized consideration, violated the federal Administrative Procedures Act. This is a federal law that all federal agencies must follow.
Lin found these agencies violated the act in that their actions were “arbitrary, capricious and an abuse of discretion.” The judges also found that the termination of grants that used the word “diversity” (and the Trump administration literally did a word search in deciding what grants to end) violated the First Amendment.
Lin issued a preliminary injunction against the National Science Foundation, the National Endowment of the Humanities and the Environmental Protection Agency to keep them from terminating grants to UC faculty and researchers. Thus, the National Science Foundation’s termination of grants to UCLA researchers violated Lin’s order.
On Tuesday, Aug. 12, Lin held a hearing as to whether the government should be found in contempt. The government’s argument was that the judge had prevented “termination” of grants, whereas the National Science Foundation had just indefinitely “suspended” them.
Lin emphatically rejected this sophistry. The reality is that for grant recipients there is no difference between a termination and an indefinite suspension. Their research must stop; their labs must close; their post-doctoral students and graduate students can’t get paid. Besides, as a matter of law, whether it is called a termination or a suspension, the government must adhere to the requirements in the law. Lin ordered that the National Science Foundation grants to UCLA faculty be restored.
This, though, is just one agency’s grants to faculty at one school. Billions of dollars of research money have been cut off throughout the United States. It has all been done illegally.
The effects of this on higher education, on research and on people’s lives will be enormous. And it is all just because Trump wants to punish universities and make them cower to his will.
Erwin Chemerinsky is dean and professor of law at the UC Berkeley School of Law.
This story was originally published August 18, 2025 at 11:22 AM with the headline "President Trump wants to punish universities and make them cower to his will | Opinion."