UCLA Chancellor Criticizes Law School’s Sept. 11 Symposium

UCLA Chancellor Julio Frenk last week denounced a Sept. 11 symposium at his institution’s law school, which promoted a panel featuring the attorney who represented Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, described in the 9/11 Commission report as the “principal architect” of the attacks, the Los Angeles Times reported.

“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,” Frenk wrote in a public statement Friday. “Nothing about this event at the UCLA School of Law, which we do not endorse, changes or qualifies those commitments.”

The symposium, “25 Years After 9/11: Reimagining Freedom, Justice, and Security,” took place Sept. 10 and 11 and was sponsored by five centers at the UCLA School of Law.

Attorney Melanie T. Partow, who has represented Mohammed at Guantanamo Bay, was listed as a speaker on a Friday panel titled “Torture, Rendition, and Detention: The Erosion of the Rights Regime Post-9/11.” It’s unclear whether she actually spoke, the L.A. Times reported; the event was in-person only and neither streamed nor recorded.

Frenk’s statement acknowledged the pain the symposium caused members of the UCLA community, including longtime computer science professor Judea Pearl, whose son, Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl, Mohammed has confessed to murdering in Pakistan in 2002.

Pearl told the L.A. Times he was “ashamed of my university and, especially, the five centers within the UCLA School of Law sponsoring this disturbing symposium.”

“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,” Frenk’s statement said. “Judea’s voice, and the history behind it, deserve to be heard with the seriousness and humanity they demand.” 

At the same time, Frenk noted that allowing divisive or offensive speech on campus is not the same as supporting the speaker or their views.

“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,” he wrote.

In a statement posted on Substack Sunday, the symposium co-chairs wrote that they were “enormously proud” of the “nuanced and sophisticated” discussions the panelists engaged in, and “disappointed” by the negative media coverage.

The symposium addressed the “dual realities we must hold at once,” the six co-chairs noted: the horrors and loss of the terrorist attacks as well as the “war, displacement, detention, torture, surveillance, racial and religious targeting” that followed.

“The University should value the speech of experts who both condemn the 9/11 attacks and object to the grave human rights abuses carried out in response,” they wrote.