BUZZ
Leader of center hosting Weiss also threatened to resign if journalist spoke on campus
CBS News Editor-in-Chief Bari Weiss will not be speaking next week at UCLA, reportedly due to security threats and pushback from professors and students.
Nearly 11,000 people signed a petition demanding the university cancel the event, and a leader at the center hosting her talk threatened to resign if the journalist speaks, The Daily Bruin reports.
On Wednesday, the public university announced the cancelation of Weiss’s lecture on its website. It says it will reimburse anyone who bought tickets for the event.
Weiss was scheduled to give the UCLA Burkle Center’s annual Daniel Pearl Memorial guest lecture, scheduled for Feb. 27, on “The Future of Journalism.” Other past speakers have included Bob Woodward, Larry King, Jake Tapper, and Anderson Cooper.
The LA Times reports more about the security concerns:
A source familiar with the UCLA program said the lecture was canceled because of security concerns from Weiss, despite the public university offering to obtain additional security for the event, the source said. …
According to the source, several employees at the Burkle Center and the International Institute expressed opposition to Weiss speaking on campus. The university was also expecting a large number of students to protest the event.
Margaret Peters, associate director of the Burkle Center, told The Daily Bruin there is a possibility Weiss may still speak virtually, but she will not appear on campus.
However, Peters also threatened to resign if the journalist speaks.
She told the student newspaper “that she believes Weiss has used the guise of free speech to attack people on the left whose opinions she does not agree with – and having her speak at a signatory lecture would legitimize these actions.”
“To invite somebody who is working against that mission in highly powerful places just seems like anathema in the university mission,” Peters said.
Weiss’s career grew in the public eye in 2020 when she quit The New York Times after raising concerns about radical left-wing bias at the prestigious newspaper. She later founded The Free Press, an independent online news outlet, and, last fall, became editor-in-chief of CBS News.
The petition calling for her lecture to be canceled accused her of bias in her reporting, particularly regarding the Trump administration. The feminist group Code Pink organized the petition.
“… Weiss has recently aligned herself with the Trump administration by attempting to cover up the fact that ICE agents are sending Venezuelan migrants to a torture center in El Salvador,” the petition states. “She has a history of flagrant xenophobic remarks about Palestinians, Muslims, and Arabs, and prides herself on her extreme views.”
Weiss is Jewish.
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