The University of California, Los Angeles, is negotiating with thefederal governmentto end a research funding pause of more than half a billion dollars, according to the school. Approximately $584 million has been suspended, UCLA Chancellor Julio Frenksaid in an Aug. 6 messageto the campus community. James Milliken, the president of the University of California system, said the school has committed to "engage in dialogue with the federal administration" in hopes of ending the freeze, "as soon as possible." On July 29, theJustice Departmentnotified UCLA that it had violated federal civil rights laws and allowed discrimination to occur against Jewish and Israeli students when it failed to adequatelyrespond to protestsin thespring of 2024stemming from theIsrael-Hamas war. Read more:Ivy League colleges face a reckoning after Columbia's Trump deal Since then, grants from the National Science Foundation, the National Institutes of Health and other federal agencies have been cut off, jeopardizing the university's research apparatus. "This far-reaching penalty of defunding life-saving research does nothing to address any alleged discrimination," Frenk said in a July 31 statement. Read more:The details of Columbia's extraordinary $220 million deal with Trump The funding freeze mirrors similar actions the federal government has taken against other prestigious colleges in recent weeks and months, prompting a series of unprecedented agreements with schools likeColumbiaandBrown. UCLA is the first major public institution, however, whose research support has come into the Trump administration's crosshairs. Zachary Schermele is an education reporter for USA TODAY. You can reach him by email at zschermele@usatoday.com. Follow him on X at @ZachSchermele and Bluesky at @zachschermele.bsky.social. This article originally appeared on USA TODAY:UCLA has $584M frozen by Trump admin over 2024 protests