This is a tribute to Judea Pearl, the father of Daniel Pearl, a reporter with the Wall Street Journal who was murdered in January 2002 by Islamist terrorists in Pakistan. Judea is also a world-renowned professor of computing at UCLA, where a lecture in honor of Daniel — to have been delivered today, Feb. 27 — has been canceled as a consequence of anti-Israel protests.
I’ve never had the honor of meeting Judea, but I’ve admired him from afar for more than two decades. He is among the bravest of men, and the finest of Jews.
Judea’s son Daniel was murdered because he was American, but most particularly because he was Jewish. His was the ritual execution of a Jew by evil men to whom all Jewish life was an affront. His murderers filmed Daniel’s killing, releasing a video titled “The Slaughter of the Spy-Journalist, the Jew Daniel Pearl.”
Imagine the lifelong anguish of his father, Judea, now 89. But imagine also his strength, his untiring resilience, and his refusal to lay down his weapons in the battle against antisemitism — or “Zionophobia,” the word wants us all to use instead.
In “Coexistence and Other Fighting Words,” an anthology of his writings published in December, Judea asserts that racist “anti-Zionism, not antisemitism, is the issue plaguing Jews today.” And he says that anti-Zionism, or Zionophobia, “earns its racist character from denying Jewish people what it grants to other collectives, namely the right to nationhood and self-determination.”
Zionophobia is particularly acute on American campuses, including his own at UCLA, where he has taught with distinction for 55 years. Judea had a bitter personal taste of it with the cancellation of today’s annual Daniel Pearl Memorial Lecture at UCLA after vociferous threats by students to disrupt the event. These promises of disruption were accompanied by threats by political science Prof. Margaret Peters to resign if the lecture went ahead.
The lecturer in question, Bari Weiss — editor in chief of CBS News — drew the ire of hostile UCLA students for her support of Israel. Agitators warned they wouldn’t let the lecture, on “The Future of Journalism,” occur.
UCLA has disgraced itself in the last two years, being among the universities that have let anti-Jewish campus protests spiral out of control after Oct. 7, 2023 and it was sued this week by the Department of Justice for allowing antisemitism on campus. In July, it agreed to pay $6 million to settle discrimination complaints brought by Jewish faculty and students. One centered on UCLA’s allowing the creation by activists of a “Jew Exclusion Zone” on campus.
Perhaps chastened by these legal consequences, university authorities said that they would “implement a comprehensive security plan” for the Pearl event.
But Weiss’ security team wasn’t reassured. She canceled out of an abundance of caution. And who can blame her? In the climate of unhinged hysteria in anti-Israel circles, who can be sure she wouldn’t be attacked?
In all of this, our hearts break for Judea Pearl. His son was killed for being a Jew in 2002. Yet 24 years later, at the very university to which Judea has dedicated a lifetime of teaching and toil, a lecture in honor of his slain son can’t proceed because the speaker wasn’t hostile to Jews.
Shame on UCLA for treating Judea Pearl in this way.
Broidy, an entrepreneur and philanthropist, is chairman and CEO of Broidy Capital Holdings and a co-chairman of the Fund to End Antisemitism, Extremism and Hate.