Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was the mastermind of 9/11 and personally beheaded Wall Street Journal journalist Daniel Pearl on video, who stated as he was about to be excuted: “My father is Jewish, my mother is Jewish. I am Jewish.” See my 2017 post for more, Daniel Pearl was murdered 15 years ago today.
Daniel’s father, Judea, is a professor at UCLA, and expressed dismay that UCLA law faculty organized a conference on September 11 featuring the lawyer who represented KSM at Gitmo.
I stand ashamed of my university and, especially, the five centers within the UCLA School of Law sponsoring this disturbing symposium. September 11 and October 7 are two painful events that should be used to commemorate the victims of those attacks — Americans and Israelis. Platforming organizations like CAIR that have been sympathetic to the attackers is distasteful, if not despicable. To my esteemed colleagues at these five centers: Please find different dates to engage us with your political sophistry. Let us spend these two days in serene prayers with our dear ones — find yourselves different dates.
This was no neutral conference, it was the typical anti-Israel hackery we’ve come to expect at a place like UCLA – replete with the false claim in the announcement for the event of an “ongoing genocide in Gaza.” The hideous CAIR was a participant.
So Prof. Pearl expressed his dismay that 9/11 was hijacked in this way, and the UCLA Chancellor issued a very mild statement of sympathy for the Pearl family and making clear that the conference was independent and not “endorsed” by UCLA. It was a bland statement expressing humanity and opposition to antisemitism and terrorism.
Judea Pearl is a deeply valued member of the UCLA community, and I have profound respect for him, for the memory of his son Daniel, and for his decades-long commitment to combating antisemitism, terrorism and hatred. The brutal murder of Daniel Pearl was an act of unspeakable evil, and I support Judea and his family. We also mourn the thousands of lives lost from the terrorist attack on September 11, 2001, as well as the suffering of countless families and communities.
UCLA’s values are clear. We reject antisemitism and terrorism in all their forms, and we believe our campus must be a place where the dignity of every member of our community is respected. Nothing about this event at the UCLA School of Law, which we do not endorse, changes or qualifies those commitments.
Academic freedom does not require us to be neutral about antisemitism or terrorism. Speaking at UCLA should never be mistaken for the university’s approval, endorsement, or acceptance of an individual’s viewpoints, or our institution’s indifference to the pain their presence may cause members of our community.
In this case, I understand why Professor Pearl and others are deeply hurt. Judea’s voice, and the history behind it, deserve to be heard with the seriousness and humanity they demand.
Then the UCLA Law faculty lost their sh*t issuing a furious denunciation of the Chancellor and demanding a retraction and apology. The L.A. Times has a summary of the controversy:
In letters to Frenk this week, dozens of UCLA School of Law faculty demanded a retraction and called Frenk’s statement “not befitting of a leader.” More than 200 signatories to a nationwide open letter that included professors at Harvard and Stanford also called for a retraction.
The influential leaders of UCLA’s Academic Senate sent a more measured letter to Frenk about their “concerns and reservations,” urging administrators and faculty to work together to uphold academic freedom.
The Sept. 10-11 symposium in question examined the legal consequences of the U.S. response to the attacks, including torture, detention and government surveillance. Right-leaning media criticized its inclusion of a Defense Department lawyer who represented alleged 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and a speaker from the Council on American-Islamic Relations, a Muslim civil rights group.
Some members of the Jewish campus community also objected to the program’s description of Israel’s war in Gaza, launched after the Oct. 7, 2023 Hamas attack, as “genocide.” International human rights groups have used the term, but Israel has disputed it, and major American Jewish leaders have said the accusation is antisemitic….
Frenk issued a statement about the symposium on Sept. 11 saying UCLA did not endorse the event: “We reject antisemitism and terrorism in all their forms and we believe our campus must be a place where the dignity of every member of our community is respected. Nothing about this event at the UCLA School of Law, which we do not endorse, changes or qualifies those commitments.”
This week, faculty wrote that his words lent credence to false accusations against the symposium and wrongly suggested that the lawyer or the organizers supported her client’s alleged crimes.
Frenk responded to the Academic Senate with his own letter.
I had a chance to discuss this dispute with Laura Ingraham tonight:
Transcript – auto-generated, may contain transcription errors, lightly edited for transcript clarity
Ingraham: The inmates really do want to run the asylum, the academic asylum that is, where things have gone totally crazy.
More than 50 UCLA law profs and over 200 academics across the country are demanding that UCLA Chancellor Julio Frenk formally retract his statement distancing the university from a September 11th law school symposium that was held there. One that hosted the lawyer of 9/11 mastermind, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. But this is really personal for the school because the son of one of its top professors, American journalist Daniel Pearl, was beheaded by KSM in 2002.
Here with reaction is William Jacobson, Cornell University law professor. William, we have you on to discuss these matters of free speech, free expression, academic, liberty on campus. But Professor Judea Pearl was the first to speak out, about this attorney for Khalid Sheikh Mohammed appearing on campus and the chancellor is standing with him.
So what are these radicals upset about?
WAJ: Well, it’s a total overreaction. They’re upset that somebody expressed a viewpoint on campus that they disagree with. The chancellor did not criticize the event. He did not try to hold it up. He did not try to cancel it.
What he did is he expressed normal human sympathy for a professor on campus, Judea Pearl, whose son was beheaded by the mastermind of 9/11, whose lawyer was on the panel. An event, by the way, which mendaciously was framed as being about a genocide in Gaza, and there is none.
So this was a highly political event, and all he did is express sympathy with a faculty member whose son was killed. And the reaction, the overreaction from the faculty shows that they live in a bubble. They are not used to the mildest of criticism. I’m not even sure this constituted criticism. It was just an opinion they didn’t like.
Ingraham: It wasn’t criticism. Frankly, I would have criticized it. I think the chancellor would have been well within his right, his own right, as a representative of the university to say, “This is September 11th. 2,977 of our fellow countrymen perished in the worst terror attack on our nation’s soil. Hosting the lawyer for the mastermind of this, in my view, was inappropriate.” Do they have a right to do it? I guess, yeah. But it doesn’t mean that the chancellor has to go, “Fabulous, this is a great tribute to the victims of nine eleven.” It’s disgusting and alums of UCLA should vote with their pocketbooks on how they respond to this.
WAJ: He might have been well served to criticize it, but he didn’t. It’s really the overreaction by the faculty. They are so protective of their, what they call their free speech and academic freedom that they seek to deny it to others on campus.
Just because you have academic freedom doesn’t mean the chancellor doesn’t have academic freedom or Judea Pearl doesn’t have academic freedom.
So these are cry bullies. These are intolerant cry bullies who couldn’t even stand a human sympathy expressed by the chancellor for a fellow professor. That’s how intolerant they are.
Ingraham: They would have celebrated though if the chancellor said, you know, America deserved it or we did things to provoke this or it was our teaming up with Israel on things that drove people to the … I mean, he would have, they would have said nothing because if it’s not complete obedience to their point of view, they will try to deny you the right to speak. They don’t want to hear you. It’s not about tolerance, it’s about dominance. That’s what college campus life is like too often. You know that better than any one professor. You’re far nicer in this situation than I would be a professor. Thank you. Thank you so much.
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