California Gov. Gavin Newsom suggested Thursday that he would resign before allowing the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA) to pay a fine to the federal government over antisemitism on campus.
Several Ivy League universities have paid fines and penalties, notably Columbia (over $200 million) and Brown ($50 million) in agreements to settle claims that they let antisemitism run rampant on campus.
UCLA was the site of some of the worst antisemitism and violence in the country during the anti-Israel “encampment” protests in the spring of 2024. The Trump administration identified UCLA as one of its top ten investigative targets, and pulled $200 million in research funding — later rising to nearly $600 million — from the university last week after finding that it had violated Jewish and Israeli students’ civil rights.
Newsom, answering press questions at an event on artificial intelligence and the workforce, suggested that he would not allow UCLA to pay similar fines, and would even resign to prevent it from doing so.
“We’re not Brown, we’re not Columbia, and I’m not going to be governor if we act like that. Period. Full stop. I will fight like hell to make sure that doesn’t happen.”
Newsom also downplayed the problem of antisemitism on campus, saying the disputes were the result of “the temperament of an aggrieved individual who happens to currently be President of the United States.”
The Los Angeles Times noted: “The university system, run by its president and Board of Regents, is independent under the state Constitution of ‘all political or sectarian influence.’ At at the same time, the governor can exercise political sway over the regents, whose members he appoints. Newsom also holds an ex-officio seat on the board.”
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of Trump 2.0: The Most Dramatic ‘First 100 Days’ in Presidential History, available for Amazon Kindle. He is also the author of The Trumpian Virtues: The Lessons and Legacy of Donald Trump’s Presidency, now available on Audible. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.
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