Dan Garisto

Justice Department Finds the University of California-Los Angeles in Violation of Federal Civil Rights Law Today, the U.S. Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division announced that the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) violated the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment and Title...

It's a finding from an investigation. Whether the investigation is fair, accurate, etc. is another matter which is not the subject of our story, which is about the impact of the grant suspensions. www.justice.gov/opa/pr/justi...

I reached out to a number of people on extremely short notice; several declined to talk. Pearl has made very public accusations about antisemitism and I thought it would be good to get his opinion of the policy on record given that his grant was suspended.

What exactly is your issue here?

NSF and NIH suspend grants to UCLA Move follows Trump administration finding that school didn’t effectively combat antisemitism

Note that we've updated the story to reflect the numbers of DOE and NIH grants: www.science.org/content/arti...

Yoking the ghost of his dead son to him is both unnecessary and, IMO, callous to him. His views on antisemitism and campus protests are sufficient context for the reader. Personal trauma has its place and that is not a short news story about a policy of mass grant suspensions.

New: In addition to UCLA's NSF grants, looks like ~494 NIH grants and 2 DOE grants were also suspended. Will have more details later once they are processed.

I asked him if he was concerned about government overreach.

To be clear, Pearl objected to other computer science/math grants being cut, not just his own.

He instead asked for federal targeting of non-STEM departments like "gender studies or Asian American studies" which have "openly declared themselves antisemitic or anti-Zionist, which is even worse."

Spoke w/ Bridget Fahey about this in April: There's been a relative lack of attempts to try cases in the Court of Claims, tho they are ideally situated to adjudicate these kinds of cases. Unfortunately, the Court of Claims does not issue injunctions, though plaintiffs could get monetary relief.

it's definitely Friday

In June, Tao gave an online talk on the twin primes conjecture as part of Scientific Webinars in Solidarity with Palestine. “Sometimes you wonder what’s the point of doing mathematics in such a time,” he said to the virtual audience. “But at least one thing that mathematics offers is that it’s at least one place where we can actually resolve even very bitter disputes.”

While reporting, I stumbled across a recent talk that Tao gave on the subject of his latest research. youtu.be/cXqz5hgxlLM

The suspensions landed perhaps most heavily in math. NSF suspended a $25 million grant for the Institute for Pure and Applied Mathematics (IPAM), an international center at UCLA that hosts about 2000 visiting researchers every year for workshops and other programs. One of its stars, Terence Tao, a Fields Medal winner frequently named as one of the greatest living mathematicians, also had his only NSF grant suspended. The $750,000 award was in its first year and supported Tao’s own research and a handful of graduate students in developing tools to tell whether a set of numbers is structured or random. Tao says he now cannot offer research assistant opportunities during the academic year, and he calls the cuts to IPAM “quite disastrous.” Tao’s ultimate goal is to use the tools to solve the twin primes conjecture, a centuries-old problem in number theory that suggests there are an infinite number of prime pairs that differ by two, like five and seven. But the NSF grant provided the vast majority of outside support for his UCLA salary. “I’m currently doing summer research unfunded,” he says.

Math at UCLA suffered the greatest blow.

I spoke with Terry Tao—Fields Medalist and arguably the preeminent mathematician of his generation—who is apparently now doing his summer research in number theory without external funding.

Judea Pearl, a UCLA computer scientist who has been publicly critical of campus protests, is the co–principal investigator of a $1.2 million suspended grant to apply genetics to large-scale electronic health records. Most of the funding has been spent, Pearl says, adding, “I’ve been a principal investigator for NSF for maybe 50 years, so I’ll be very upset if my grant gets cut.” Nearly one-quarter of the suspended NSF grants fund computer science. “It’s unfair,” Pearl says. “They should look into the [UCLA] departments that have been delinquent in antisemitism.”

I spoke with several researchers, including Judea Pearl, who has been outspoken about the campus protests and believes UCLA has (since 2006, he told me) a problem with antisemitism.

Pearl was unhappy to learn he is a co-PI on a suspended grant.

These initiatives are deeply personal to me. My paternal grandparents left Germany in the 1930s with my father, who was 6 years old, and my aunt, who was 4. They were driven out of their home by an intolerable climate of antisemitism and hate. Members of my family who did not make that decision perished. My wife is the daughter of a Holocaust survivor, whose family was murdered in the concentration camps. That history is part of what drew me to UCLA. Our university was founded on the principle that everyone, no matter their background, deserves the freedom to learn and use that knowledge to make this world a better place. With the support of our government at all levels, UCLA’s research, innovation and education does that every day, benefiting Americans across the nation.

Frenk is, notably, the grandchild of Holocaust survivors, which he mentions in a long open letter defending UCLA's research and discussing initiatives to address antisemitism. chancellor.ucla.edu/messages/the...

Dr. Frenk: The U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) has undertaken a review of its award portfolio. The agency has determined that suspension of certain awards is necessary because they are not in alignment with current NSF priorities and/or programmatic goals. NSF understands that the University of California – Los Angeles continues to engage in race discrimination including in its admissions process, and in other areas of student life, as well as failing to promote a research environment free of antisemitism and bias. We have considered reliance interests and they are outweighed by the NSF’s policy concerns. Effective immediately, the attached awards are suspended until further notice. NSF is issuing this suspension to protect the interests of the government pursuant to NSF Grant General Conditions (GC-1) term and condition entitled 'Termination and Enforcement,' on the basis that the awards no longer effectuate program goals or agency priorities. This is the final agency decision and not subject to appeal. Costs incurred as a result of this suspension may be reimbursed, provided such costs would otherwise be allowable under the terms of the award and the governing cost principles. In accordance with your award terms and conditions, you have 30 days from the suspension date to furnish an itemized accounting of allowable costs incurred prior to the suspension date.

On Wednesday, NSF sent Chancellor Frenk this notice, alleging that UCLA "continues to engage in race discrimination including in its admissions process, and in other areas of student life, as
well as failing to promote a research environment free of antisemitism and bias."

See more reporting here: bsky.app/profile/dang...

NSF and NIH suspend grants to UCLA Move follows Trump administration finding that school didn’t effectively combat antisemitism

The Trump administration is launching a new wave of attacks on universities, and UCLA is the latest target.

My reporting on how the university has been hit and how some of its scientists are responding:
www.science.org/content/arti...

Table showing survey results for scientific personnel at CERN in 1979. Only ~6% of physics research staff were women.

CERN personnel today are about 25% women, which is a long way from parity, but also a long way from 1979 when Gaillard took her survey.

current stats: home.cern/news/opinion...

Gaillard's survey: cds.cern.ch/record/12341...

"WASHINGTON, D.C. (August 1, 2025) – The Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) announced today that it will begin an orderly wind-down of its operations"

cpb.org/pressroom/Co...

NSF Grant Suspensions at UCLA total $90M lost in value – Grant Witness

cf. Grant-Witness, using NSF data, found $90 million unspent, as opposed to 81 million. Difference could be due to different sources.
grant-witness.us/posts/UCLA-n...

fyi

bsky.app/profile/dang...

(This is about UCLA, to be clear)

"Department of Energy is freezing $18.2 million in funds, HHS and NIH are freezing $240 million in funds and NSF is freezing $81 million in funds, an administration official told the Caller."

Have not verified this, but here are the admin numbers given to the Daily Caller. Based on their NSF number, which is close to the ~85ish million unspent calculated by @noamross.net, I would assume DOE and NIH are not total intended funds, but funds remaining to be outlayed (i.e. unspent).

A wonderful obit by @katrinamillerphd.bsky.social. An all-time fumble by 80's-era CERN.

In 1976, Gaillard, Ellis, & Ross published a paper explaining how to search for gluons (then only theoretical) in e+e- collisions.

In 1979 gluons were discovered at DESY using their method.

"Dr. Gaillard left CERN in 1981 after she was passed over for a senior staff position."

Seems there's also suspensions, but unclear how much & what. I think POs are looking, but it's always harder to track down NIH because the funding is less centralized than NSF.

Pie chart showing suspended grants by directorate. Math and physics are the largest section at over a quarter. Comp sci is close.

Here's suspended grants by directorate.
Top three:
MPS: 26.7%
CISE: 22.8%
GEO: 19.3%

For the math folks on here: NSF has suspended Terry Tao's grant. www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/...

Here it is. Looks like 280 grants, since a number were already expired. Total for $189 million, with about half of it spent and half yet to be spent. grant-witness.us/nsf-data.html