EDITORS' CORNER
One panelist argued counterterrorism is ‘racist’
The University of California Los Angeles is set to host a Sept. 11 anniversary symposium featuring speakers accused of expressing sympathy for terrorism.
The event, hosted by UCLA law school’s Critical Race Studies program, is scheduled for Sept. 10 and 11. It aims to examine the “sweeping expansions of state power” in the post-9/11 era, according to the event description.
“This symposium brings together legal scholars, practitioners, and others from across various disciplines to examine the enduring legacies of 9/11; the ways the legal and political architecture of the post-9/11 era continues to shape contemporary debates about race, migration, surveillance, war, technology, policing, and international law; and think collectively about how to chart a better path forward,” the description states.
Panelist Aslı Ü. Bâli argued in a 2020 essay that counterterrorism is “racist,” the Washington Free Beacon reported.
“Without addressing the revenue streams tied to counterterrorism at home and abroad, there can be no meaningful way to defund the police,” he wrote.
Another featured speaker, Hussam Ayloush, executive director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations’ California chapter, drew controversy in 2023 after declaring that Israel “does not have the right to self-defense” and comparing the Jewish state to Nazi Germany.
Moderator and UCLA law professor Richard Abel, has argued that the Trump administration has harmed the U.S. more than 9/11 did.
Further, the University of Minnesota’s Amna Akbar will also speak at the event. He called Luigi Mangione’s murder of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson a “spectacular act of protest,” according to the Free Beacon.
One panel, on “The Racialization of the War on Terror,” will paint the war on terror as a result of “White Christian nationalism,” according to the event description.
“Concepts such as ‘radical Islam,’ ‘political Islamist,’ and ‘terrorist activity’ criminalized religious identity, beliefs, and practices the U.S. government determined were threats to Western state hegemony in Muslim majority countries and White Christian nationalism in the homeland,” it states.
The Free Beacon notes that the event examines post-9/11 executive authority under President Bush, but none of the prominent legal architects who authored or justified those policies are included on the panels.
UCLA’s event is not the only one facing backlash for its invited speakers.
The Knight First Institute at Columbia University invited Mohsen Mahdawi, who has been under fire for allegedly supporting terrorist organizations, to participate in its symposium Friday.
Mahdawi dropped out of the event, but a Catholic group still condemned the institute for trying to platform him.
“You do not accidentally invite someone who made common cause with radical Islamist terrorists on the same week as the 25th anniversary of the deadliest terrorist attack in American history – one in which nearly 3,000 innocent Americans were killed by radical Islamist terrorists. That is not an oversight. That is a deliberate message,” Catholic League spokesperson Michael McDonald told The College Fix.
MORE: UC Berkeley Law discriminates against white, Asian students, Justice Department says
