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 criticism in a response to the school’s Academic Senate, which also expressed concern about his rebuke. But he sought to soften suggestions that he slammed the law school.
“I chose the words of my statement carefully and deliberately,” he said. “Some subsequent accounts have characterized it as a condemnation, rebuke or repudiation of the symposium. A careful read of my statement will fail to find any of those words. Furthermore, the statement did not criticize the School of Law or question the validity of legal representation, including for individuals accused of horrific acts.”
A rep for Frenk told The California Post that the chancellor’s statement was “absolutely a condemnation” of the 9/11 event when asked if the academic leader’s statement was in fact a condemnation.
“The key point of my statement is that we can uphold academic freedom while also expressing support for
members of our community who are hurting. A university is more than a collection of individual rights and
freedoms. It is a community, and community carries with it obligations of reciprocity,” Frenk concluded.
A wider open letter featuring more than 200 signatories, including professors from Stanford and Harvard, also pushed Frenk for a retraction.
“The implication in the Chancellor’s statement that the conference 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,” the letter says.
The elite institution’s law school hosted the “25 Years After 9/11: Reimagining Freedom, Justice, and Security” event on Sept. 10 and 11 featuring Partow and other left-wing minds, including a Yale professor who once referred to counterterrorism as a “racist gravy train.”
The tone-deaf event came as UCLA has faced lawsuits from the Trump administration over allegedly failing to address antisemitism on campus or protect Jewish students and Israeli employees. Victims decried the event.
“It’s absolutely absurd,” Jim McCaffrey, an FDNY lieutenant at the time of the attacks who responded to the Twin Towers, told the California Post. “They’re pointing fingers at the victims. We’re the bad guys for being attacked. It’s mind-boggling. What’s going on in academia?”
Judea Pearl, 90, said the appearance of Partow made him “ashamed of my university,” as he accused it of “weaponizing” the 25th anniversary of the terror attacks. Daniel Pearl, a Wall Street Journal reporter, was decapitated by 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed in Pakistan in 2002 after being lured there for a supposed interview with an Islamic scholar.
Frenk became UCLA’s seventh chancellor in January 2025.
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