UCLA should tell radical faculty they are free to – Latest News
Extremist left-wing professors are attacking UCLA chancellor Julio Frenk for the thoughtcrime of opposing antisemitism and terrorism, within the identify of the college, in a current assertion.
It is really outrageous.
In response, Frenk wrote the professors a very well mannered letter. He should have advised them to go to hell as an alternative.
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Khalid Sheikh Mohammed is proven on this file {photograph}. Reuters
UCLA’s law faculty held a symposium on September 11 that criticized America’s response to the fear assaults of September 11, 2001. One of the panelists had represented Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, or KSM, the alleged mastermind of the assault.
KSM additionally allegedly confessed to decapitating Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl, partly as a result of Pearl was Jewish. Pearl’s father, Judea, is a professor at UCLA. He didn’t strive to stop the occasion, however spoke critically of it.
When the story of the symposium emerged, there was public outrage. And why wouldn’t there be?
This is a college that claims it has discovered the teachings of 2024, when it allowed radicals to occupy the middle of campus for a week in an “encampment” that excluded journalists and blocked Jewish college students from strolling to their dorms or courses except they denounced Israel.
Frenk reacted to the 9/11 occasion the best way any regular human being would — at the least, one not brainwashed by radicals. He opposed it. A bit late, maybe, however he did the appropriate factor.
Note what he didn’t do.
He didn’t strive to stop the occasion. He didn’t kick it off campus. He didn’t ship the organizers to sensitivity coaching, which UCLA might need achieved if professors had introduced a lawyer for the KKK to lecture on the anniversary of the Selma-to-Montgomery march.
Frenk acknowledged, merely: “UCLA’s values are clear. We reject antisemitism and terrorism in all their forms. …Academic freedom does not require us to be neutral about antisemitism or terrorism.”
UCLA Chancellor Julio Frenk speaks during his inauguration ceremony at Royce Hall in Los Angeles, Thursday, June 5, 2025. Los Angeles Times through Getty Images
That’s what triggered the faculty, whose senate wrote to Frenk that it had “concerns and reservations” as a result of his assertion was “interpreted as criticizing the law school event.”
Evidently educational freedom means defending a terrorist, however not criticizing somebody who defends a terrorist. (The distinguished professors can’t even obey their own lofty ideas.)
Frenk wrote back, thanking the senate for its “thoughtful” (actually, brainless) letter. He nearly backed down.
He framed his opposition to terrorism and antisemitism as a manner to help Judea Pearl “and others in our community who carry their own lived experiences of September 11 and its aftermath,” as if being outraged by terrorism was simply a personal perspective.
“[W]e can uphold academic freedom while also expressing support for members of our community who are hurting,” he stated.
No — this isn’t about emotions. It’s about taking the facet of civilization versus barbarism.
People who are upset about 9/11 aren’t asking for “empathy.” We’re asking first for bodily security, after which for fundamental ethical decency.
We have additionally determined that what makes us a great civilization is that we are ready to permit complete freedom to those that would preach barbarism.
So let the professors rant. We get it. They hate the society that subsidizes them, that provides them tenure and summers off and campus parking.
But the remainder of us are allowed to have an opinion about it — and never simply as non-public people.
Frenk was too good to the faculty. He should have advised them that whereas professors are free to say what they need, and that even al-Qaeda terrorists deserve legal professionals, if they have a drawback with UCLA taking a stance towards antisemitism and terrorism, they are additionally free to depart.
Joel Pollak is the Opinion editor on the California Post.
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