Trump is Right: Schools Must Pay Dearly for Discriminationhttps://www.realcleareducation.com/articles/2025/09/16/trump_is_right_schools_must_pay_dearly_for_discrimination_1135256.htmlFixing 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.
Most notably, in 2024, campus anti-Israel protests at UCLA turned violent, with a student sleepover area called an “encampment” forming. The encampment participants blocked Jewish students from entering parts of campus, on the pretext that the blockades really applied only to students who were Zionists—meaning students who had the temerity to support Israel’s right to exist. UCLA, for its part, barely lifted a finger to help Jewish students
When Jewish students sued UCLA, a California federal court saw through the rhetoric that the exclusion zones didn’t technically target Jewish students. It entered an injunction prohibiting UCLA from looking the other way when Jewish students were blockaded from parts of campus. At first, UCLA even appealed the entry of that injunction. Just recently, UCLA adjusted its course and settled the case, but only for a mere $6.5 million. A nice start, but not enough to create systemic change at UCLA itself, much less provide a deterrent effect to other schools.
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Even better, the effect of a $1 billion penalty is not limited to UCLA. Other schools are watching to see what happens here. Imposing the bitter pill of a severe monetary sanction against UCLA will send a loud and succinct message to other universities: you could be next.
Hitting UCLA won't be sufficient. The heat necessary to get arrogant university admins to see the light will have to be several major prestigious universities being exposed and losing, cumulatively billions (or 10s of billions). If, during this learning period, students are hurt, that's the universities' fault.
