UCLA chief rejects 'antisemitism and terrorism.' Law professors claim he violated academic freedom.

When campus events hosted by conservative faculty draw complaints from their far more numerous progressive colleagues and students, administrators are liable to launch formal investigations and even disciplinary proceedings up to termination, as California community college professors learned over the past several years.

Progressive faculty across the country have a new complaint: UCLA Chancellor Julio Frenk distanced its law school from a progressive event that other people criticized.

Dozens of UCLA Law faculty and hundreds more law professors nationwide signed open letters denouncing Frenk for his Sept. 11 statement publicly supporting UCLA's famed computer scientist Judea Pearl, whose son Daniel Pearl was abducted and dismembered by Islamic terrorists for being Jewish while reporting for The Wall Street Journal in 2002.

Pearl and others had denounced UCLA and the law school for hosting a Sept. 10-11 "Reimagining Freedom, Justice, and Security" symposium for the 25th anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

Its speakers included the lawyer for the confessed architect of the attacks, Khalil Sheik Mohammed, who admitted to personally beheading Daniel Pearl; a Yale law professor who dismissed U.S. counterterrorism as "racist"; and the director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations' Los Angeles chapter, who once said Israel "should be attacked."

"No victims of the terror attack are listed among the speakers, and there is set to be little discussion about the actual tragedy or the first responders who died that day," the New York Post reported the day before the symposium started.

"The Chancellor’s rebuke of the Symposium violated the very terms of academic freedom that he invoked" and exposed the staff and faculty who planned it, "as well as the invited speakers, to harassment and threats," the UCLA Law faculty letter said. It "reads as an assault on the law school" and what employees "do to advance the academic mission of the University."

The national law professors' letter emphasized the media interpretation of Frenk's statement "as a censure of the conference." Frenk's implication that it "may have endorsed antisemitism and terrorism is not only inaccurate, but it also compounds the risks faced by lawyers and scholars engaged in work that is key to the functioning of legal institutions."

Frenk criticized portrayals of his statement as "a condemnation, rebuke or repudiation of the symposium" in a Thursday response letter to the more measured "concerns and reservations" of the Academic Senate's leadership.

"I chose the words of my statement carefully and deliberately," which "did not criticize the School of Law or question the validity of legal representation, including for individuals accused of horrific acts," Frenk wrote. 

He is "equally committed" to "safeguarding academic freedom and preserving free expression" and "sustaining the mutual respect, care and reciprocity that allow those freedoms – and our community – to flourish."

Pearl accused UCLA Law on Sept. 10 of "weaponizing the painful days of 9/11 and 10/7 to promote hateful ideologies," citing a report by the Washington Free Beacon that the gathering featured "avowed supporters of political violence."

"Having lost a son to such an ideology, I stand ashamed of my university and, especially, the five Centers within" UCLA Law for "sponsoring this despicable symposium," Pearl wrote.

He also denounced the Los Angeles Times for cutting out parts of his statement that narrowed his objections, which did not mention Mohammed's lawyer. The newspaper initially left out his criticism of "platforming organizations like CAIR that have been sympathetic to the attackers," then made ghost edits.

The timing was particularly bad for UCLA, which feted the living legend in artificial intelligence and 56-year veteran of the school for his 90th birthday days before the Sept. 11 anniversary. 

The daylong "Pearl@90" event featured "personal tributes and discussions exploring artificial intelligence and causal reasoning, Jewish identity, dialogue and coexistence, and peace," UCLA's in-house newsroom wrote Sept. 11. Frenk himself embraced Pearl and praised him as "a living testament to what higher learning makes possible."

Pearl expressed bewilderment Thursday that Google's Gemini AI could not locate any "available transcripts, quotes, or first-hand accounts reporting" of CAIR California CEO Hussam Ayloush's remarks at the symposium. (Organizers specified that it would not be "streamed live or recorded," and registration was required to attend.)

CAIR California released Ayloush's 9/11 anniversary remarks that day, which contrasted the "spirit of unity that existed immediately after the attacks" with the "bad actors [who] are once again exploiting the 9/11 attacks to score political points, incite discrimination, and justify forever wars overseas."

Symposium speakers shared views 'widely held among lawyers'

UCLA has a fraught recent history with perceived antisemitism, which prompted lawsuits against its so-called "Jewish Exclusion Zone" – an illegal encampment of pro-Palestine students who demanded Jewish students renounce Israel to pass through – and administrative attempt to derail a pro-Israel event. 

It also has a tense relationship with conservative students. This spring, the law school walked back threats to punish Federalist Society chapter members if they publicly identified students who had disrupted their event with a Department of Homeland Security official.

Frenk's Sept. 11 statement put the Pearls and those killed on 9/11 front and center, while more vaguely mourning "the suffering of countless families and communities." He praised Judea Pearl's "decades-long commitment to combating antisemitism, terrorism and hatred" and called Daniel's "brutal murder [...] an act of unspeakable evil." 

"UCLA’s values are clear. We reject antisemitism and terrorism in all their forms," he wrote. "Academic freedom does not require us to be neutral about antisemitism or terrorism."

Frenk repeatedly distinguished UCLA from its law school but did not clearly state the law school itself didn't sponsor the event, just five centers within it. 

"Speaking at UCLA should never be mistaken" for its "approval, endorsement, or acceptance" of someone's views, "or our institution’s indifference to the pain their presence may cause members of our community."

More than 60 UCLA law professors have signed the open letter as of Thursday, about a quarter of its total faculty. It calls on Frenk to "retract his statement publicly, or, at a minimum, state simply and unequivocally that he never had any basis for believing that this symposium promoted terrorism or antisemitism and never intended to imply that it did."

The letter denounced the "media disinformation campaign" and Frenk for blindsiding organizers with his statement and not attending the symposium himself. Mohammed's lawyer was "assigned to defend" him by the Trump administration, and speakers shared views "widely held among lawyers," such as criticizing "the so-called Muslim Travel Ban."

The national law professors' letter warned that "the independence of both academic and legal institutions is under sustained threat," including a "campaign of intimidation directed at scholars of color who are critical of American foreign policy, often drawing on racist and Islamophobic tropes familiar from the post-9/11 period."

While the symposium's purpose was "exploring the human and civil rights implications of the post-9/11 counterterrorism framework in the United States and around the world," it also featured "moving memorial remarks" by organizers, the letter said.

The Academic Senate leadership's letter Wednesday implied Frenk had infringed UC's academic freedom policy, the UCLA Senate’s Committee on Academic Freedom's guidelines for "dealing with challenging material" and Frenk's own agreement, when he was hired last year, that "academic freedom, institutional autonomy, and shared governance are essential."

Frenk answered the next day that nothing he said challenged the university's "fundamental commitment" to academic freedom "or the protections it affords faculty, symposia organizers, speakers and participants." The symposium "proceeded as planned," unchanged.

By disavowing UCLA's sponsorship, Frenk was simply reaffirming that UCLA doesn't endorse every viewpoint expressed on campus or program protected by academic freedom. "That principle applies broadly to events across our campus, and we will make that distinction clear in our communications," he said.