11 Harvard Law Faculty Join Call for UCLA Chancellor to Retract 9/11 Conference Statement

Eleven Harvard Law School faculty members joined nearly 300 law school professors calling on University of California, Los Angeles Chancellor Julio J. Frenk — a former Harvard dean — to retract a statement distancing the university from a symposium marking the 25th anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks.

The Harvard signatories were professors Nikolas Bowie, Andrew M. Crespo ’05, Christine Desan, Ryan D. Doerfler, Benjamin Eidelson, Susan H. Farbstein, Duncan M. Kennedy ’64, Randall L. Kennedy, Rebecca L. Tushnet ’95, and Dehlia I. Umunna, along with clinical instructor Radhe P. Patel.

Frenk, who served as dean of the Harvard School of Public Health from 2009 to 2015, issued the statement after the UCLA School of Law symposium on the human and civil rights consequences of the attacks featured a lawyer for Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the alleged principal architect of the 9/11 attacks and former head Al Qaeda’s propaganda operation.

The lawyer, Melanie T. Partow, has represented Mohammed at Guantanamo Bay as part of her work for the Military Commissions Defense Organization, an arm of the Defense Department.

Frenk wrote in his statement that UCLA “rejects antisemitism and terrorism in all their forms,” adding that the law school did not endorse the event.

“Academic freedom does not require us to be neutral about antisemitism or terrorism,” Frenk wrote. “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.”

Frenk also voiced support for Judea Pearl, a UCLA computer science professor whose son, Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl, was kidnapped and killed in Pakistan in 2002. Mohammed later confessed to the killing.

The faculty letter pushed back on Frenk’s statement, criticizing the implication that the conference had endorsed antisemitism and terrorism.

“A censure by the Chancellor in this context would be a dangerous and deeply troubling violation of academic freedom, involving a basic misunderstanding of the rule of law and of what law schools do,” the letter reads. “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, signed by faculty from roughly 90 different law schools, calls on Frenk to make clear that he does not believe the symposium promoted terrorism or antisemitism, and to reaffirm UCLA’s commitment to hosting speakers on a full range of topics.

UCLA’s own law faculty led the signatories with 23, followed by 13 from the University of California, Berkeley School of Law. Harvard tied for third with Rutgers Law School and City University of New York School of Law.

Doerfler, one of the statement’s organizers, wrote that Frenk’s statement was “disturbing” because it appeared to accept “the premise that a lawyer for a 9/11 attacker is somehow culpable for or supportive of the crimes of her client.”

“That conflation of client and attorney runs contrary to basic rule of law principles and the near universally held belief that the accused have a right to counsel,” Doerfler wrote in a statement to The Crimson.

Doerfler said the episode fits a broader pattern of intimidation aimed at scholars of color who criticize American foreign policy.

“All of these events take place not only amidst ongoing attacks against universities and academic freedom, but also, and more concerningly here, a recent intimidation campaign against scholars of color critical of American foreign policy,” Doerfler wrote.

During Frenk’s tenure, the School of Public Health received a gift of $350 million in 2014 — then the largest in Harvard’s history — and was renamed to be the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. The school also received a $5 million donation in 2016 to endow a professorship in Frenk’s name.

He went on to serve as the president of the University of Miami before being named UCLA’s chancellor in 2024.

—Staff writer Uy B. Pham can be reached at [email protected] or on Signal at ubp.88. Follow him on X @uybpham.

—Staff writer Sierra R. Pape can be reached at [email protected]. Follow her on X @SierraRPape.