The war between President Donald Trump and the woke academic left rages on. As progressives and their big-box media allies decry the president’s attempts to withhold federal funding to UCLA over what the administration describes as its adherence to a stridently partisan academic agenda, the university has come out with a new report blasting US Immigration and Customs Enforcement for creating a “climate of distress” at high schools across America by seeking to deport illegal aliens.
“This summer, the Trump administration canceled hundreds of millions of dollars in research grants to UCLA and threatened the loss of federal funding throughout the University of California system unless it imposed conditions in line with President Donald Trump’s ideological agenda,” a December 9 opinion piece published by The San Francisco Chronicle lamented. “The demands included restricting on-campus protests, ending diversity-related scholarships and conforming to the administration’s definitions of gender identity.”
Unsurprisingly, a Westcoast federal judge was found to thwart Trump’s efforts.
“On Nov. 14, a US district judge in San Francisco issued a preliminary injunction blocking the Trump administration’s unpopular efforts to squash academic freedom,” the co-authors, one an attorney at a law firm involved in litigation against the administration and the other a professor at USC, crowed.
UCLA – ‘Hateful’ Trump Is Harming High Schools
Where on Earth did Trump get the idea that UCLA tilts to the hard left in its academic endeavors? Perhaps a new report just released by the university’s Institute for Democracy, Education & Access (UCLA IDEA) can shed some light on the mystery.
“‘Fear is everywhere’: ICE activity leads to bullying, missed days at US high schools” reads the lurid title of the report released December 9. This is what UCLA regards as rigorous academic research deserving of federal taxpayer support.
“Given the harsh, even hateful rhetoric and aggressive immigration actions of the Trump administration, the effect on students and schools should not be surprising to anyone,” UCLA IDEA Director John Rogers is quoted as saying in a synopsis of the report. “But the widespread nature of harmful impact and deep level of concern are alarming. As one principal told us, the fear is everywhere.”
There’s no sense in diving too far into the specifics of the blatantly biased treatise. It’s everything you suspect and more. Some things do stand out, however – such as the sheer number of high schools around the nation that are apparently being affected by the Trump administration’s massive deportation operation. Just how many illegal aliens are attending US public schools these days?
“Drawing on a nationally representative survey of 606 high school principals, we assess how schools across the United States were affected by enforcement efforts in the latter half of the 2024–2025 school year,” the report reads. “More than two-thirds of US public high schools were impacted due to heightened concerns of students from immigrant families about their well-being and the well-being of their families.”
White Kids Bullying Undocumented Cherubs
“Almost two-thirds of principals across the nation (63.8%) reported that ‘students from immigrant families missed school due to policies or political rhetoric related to immigrants,’” the paper continues. The overarching attempt to portray these illegals as victims also includes the smearing of white students as “bullies” cruelly picking on their vulnerable undocumented schoolmates.
“Can I see your papers?’ Somebody said that,” the paper relates, citing a principal in Minnesota. “There has been definitely an uptick in comments made by white students, while male students, to our Hispanic students,” the school official reportedly said.
Never mind those MS-13 murder suspects enrolled in US high schools today. We’ve got bigger problems. Guess who is poisoning these young white American citizen minds with racial hatred? According to these left-wing educators, and the answer is clearly Donald Trump. The report quotes Jennifer Duran, a Texas high school teacher: “We had some students that reported that some of their peers were saying, ‘Go home, you don’t belong here.’ And that hadn’t been their experience before – until this administration.” She added that the bullied students would then tell her something like: “I’ve known this kid since third grade, and he’s never called me names, never said go back to Mexico.”
Ms. Duran then concludes: “They got that rhetoric from home or the President.”
All of this is part of a larger agenda at UCLA. Racial obsession in academia is an essential element of the university’s IDEA program. The language the center uses unmistakably smacks of cultural Marxism. Director Rogers “is the co-author of Learning Power: Organizing for Education and Justice and co-editor of Public Engagement for Public Education: Joining Forces to Revitalize Democracy and Equalize Schools,” his IDEA faculty bio states.
‘There Are a Number of Openings to Advance This Agenda’
In June 2022, Rogers was lead author of a UCLA IDEA “working paper” titled Educating Toward a Multiracial Democracy in California. Next to an image of a raised clenched fist, a signature icon of radical movements ranging from black and Latino militants to outright communist street agitators, the report explains that multicultural democracy is a “system that foregrounds inclusive participation, respectful engagement across lines of difference, and coalition work in politics, civic life, and the workplace. Multiracial democracy describes promising prevailing practices and expresses an aspiration for the racially just society we hope to achieve.”
Rogers and his fellow IDEA co-authors openly assert that they desire to train students to become young radical activists pursuing the path of social transformation.
“Public schools have an important role to play in educating toward a multiracial democracy,” the paper asserts. “There are a number of opportunities and openings in California to advance this agenda through existing initiatives such as ethnic studies, restorative justice programs, transformative social and emotional learning, and the State Seal of Civic Engagement.”
Once again, we see that the rot in academia goes far beyond mere “woke” craziness. When leading universities like UCLA are proudly boasting of the attempted radicalization of the young minds placed under the authority of teachers in the US public school system, it isn’t just a matter of poor education anymore. A very real threat is being cultivated in classrooms across America, and those leading the way are demanding that you the taxpayer fund them as they foment the class and race warfare that is squarely aimed against you.
