Written by William E. Trachman, General Counsel for MSLF, and Eitan Genger, 2025 MSLF Legal Fellow.
Published September 16, 2025.
Fixing American education, especially at the college level, won’t be easy. Put simply, it will take shock therapy to overcome the parade of DEI, anti-Semitism, and the broader efforts to instill leftwing doctrines on campuses today. But students will suffer until there’s a major course correction. And insisting on hefty sums from colleges like UCLA—such as the Department of Justice’s recent $1 billion demand—is the type of tough medicine that it will take to get there.
UCLA is a public school. That means that it has to abide by the U.S. Constitution, just like any other branch of federal or state government. But not just that; it also receives millions of dollars from the federal government, in numerous different forms like grants, student financial aid dollars that flow to the school, and other payments. In order to be eligible for those funds, it has consistently sworn to the U.S. Department of Education that it does not discriminate. That was a lie.