UCLA chancellor pressured to retract rebuke over event with 9/11 mastermind lawyer

The top academic official at UCLA is being lambasted by his own community for standing up to a 9/11 event that featured the lawyer of terrorist ‘mastermind’ Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.UCLA chancellor Julio Frenk is facing heat from dozens of UCLA School of Law faculty who have demanded a retraction of the statement condemning the event and claimed it is “not befitting of a leader.”Frenk first told The California Post that he objected to the law school symposium, and backed UCLA professor Judea Pearl, father of terrorism victim Daniel Pearl, who had first condemned the occasion.“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 said.“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.”A letter signed by 59 faculty members so far, including an assistant dean, defended the law school’s hosting of Mohammed’s lawyer, Melanie T.

Partow.“The Chancellor’s statement also implicitly accepted the critique that the Symposium supported terrorism because it included as a panelist a government lawyer employed by the Trump Administration’s Department of Defense who was assigned to defend Mohammed,” they wrote.“Again, the Chancellor had no knowledge of what she actually contributed to the discussion.

In point of fact, her comments made no reference to any particular client.They focused entirely on the unique processes and ever-evolving adjudicatory structure that the military has set for trying these cases,” the letter added.“For the Chancellor to affiliate himself with these disparaging attacks against the Symposium instead of verifying what it was actually about is not befitting of a leader.”Frenk recently doubled down on his criti...