As UCLA works to restore $500 million in federal grant funding cut by the Trump administration earlier this year, the university’s chancellor, Julio Frenk, said on Thursday that there are three principles the campus must “safeguard” amid its negotiations with the government. 

“We need to assure that there’s no government interference in who we hire, who we admit and what we teach or do research on,” Frenk told radio talk show host Larry Mantle. The two spoke during a virtual event on Thursday hosted by Jews United for Democracy and Justice, a group formed in response to President Donald Trump’s executive orders during his first term that prohibited travel and refugee resettlement from select, predominately Muslim, countries. 

“That’s the core of academic freedom,” Frenk, who began his tenure as chancellor in January, said of the series of principles.

Earlier this month, the Trump administration sent a 28-page settlement proposal to UCLA, The Los Angeles Times reported. In addition to accusations that the university failed to address antisemitism on campus, the government said it was cutting funding over the school’s use of race in admissions and the school’s recognition of transgender identities. Frenk said that he is not directly participating in the negotiations. 

Frenk, a Jewish physician whose grandparents settled in Mexico after fleeing Nazi Germany in the 1930s, admitted that UCLA has “a real problem with antisemitism” and said the university needs “to tackle it.” 

But he criticized the Trump administration’s approach of “cutting funding for life-saving and life-transforming research,” saying it “doesn’t address the problem of antisemitism.”

Asked how he would handle an incident similar to last year’s demonstration in which pro-Palestinian protesters blocked campus access for some Jewish students, leading to a lawsuit and a $6 million settlement in July, Frenk responded that “if anything happens like that, we will act immediately, because we now have very clear rules” around demonstrations. The university released a new set of time, place and manner policies earlier this month.  

Questioned whether UCLA would adopt the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s working definition of antisemitism — as Harvard and Columbia have recently done while similarly under antisemitism investigations — Frenk declined to endorse or oppose the idea, which is supported by many pro-Israel students and faculty.   

Soon after stepping into his new role at UCLA, Frenk suspended the undergraduate and graduate chapters of Students for Justice in Palestine after their members vandalized the home of UC Regent Jay Sures. In March, he announced an initiative to implement the recommendations of a task force that examined antisemitism and anti-Israel activity on campus. On Thursday, Frenk said that as part of the initiative, the university was “about to announce the recruitment of a Title VI officer” to enforce federal civil rights statutes and implement training for students and staff. 

Frenk said that combating campus antisemitism will make all students on campus safer. “A reason to fight antisemitism is to also protect our non-Jewish, including our Muslim students. We cannot accept bigotry, discrimination, hatred against one group. History shows us that if one group is attacked, and we allow that to go on, everyone is unsafe. So, this applies to all of our students.”