The facts
UCLA School of Law spent Sept. 10-11 on a symposium titled "25 Years After 9/11: Reimagining Freedom, Justice, and Security," co-sponsored by Critical Race Studies and the Promise Institute for Human Rights. The official program listed Melanie T. Partow, a Military Commissions Defense Organization trial attorney who has represented Khalid Sheikh Mohammed since at least 2020, on a Friday panel about "Torture, Rendition, and Detention." UCLA Law's own page scheduled her. The State Bar of California approved MCLE credit.
Khalid Sheikh Mohammed is the alleged principal architect of the Sept. 11 attacks. In 2007 he told a Guantanamo military hearing he beheaded Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl in Pakistan in 2002. Pearl's father, Judea Pearl, 90, teaches engineering at UCLA. He told the New York Post he stands "ashamed of my university" for "weaponizing the painful days of 9/11 and 10/7 to promote hateful ideologies."
The New York Post reported the program reserved 15 minutes for "remembrance" of the day's victims and a full hour for lunch. No 9/11 prosecutors were listed. Yale's Asli U. Bali has called counterterrorism a "racist gravy train," per the Washington Free Beacon. Chancellor Julio Frenk later told the California Post he rejected "antisemitism and terrorism in all their forms" and that the campus must respect "the dignity of every member of our community." FDNY Lt. Jim McCaffrey called the event "absolutely absurd" and said, "They're pointing fingers at the victims."
Our take
UCLA looked at the 25th anniversary and booked the alleged architect's lawyer. Not a prosecutor. The lawyer. Then it put 15 minutes of remembrance next to an hour of sandwiches, which is the most honest schedule in the building.
They put the alleged architect's counsel on a panel and called it remembrance. Judea Pearl still has to walk that campus. His son was kidnapped for an interview and had his head cut off. Khalid Sheikh Mohammed told a military court he did it. UCLA's response to that family on the anniversary of the other massacre was to give Mohammed's counsel a microphone and call it "reimagining freedom." The chancellor then issued a statement against terrorism, which is cute after the invitations went out.
You can think Gitmo is a dump and still notice the guest list. The law school did not invite the people who ran into the buildings. It invited the people who think counterterrorism is a gravy train and that the real crisis is the paperwork after 19 hijackers flew planes into offices. Daniel Pearl is not the joke. The symposium is. They weaponized the date, the father said it, and the university still needed a press hit to remember whose campus it is.
