Cornel West to speak at UCLA Despite Protests
The May 3 conference, titled “Moral Grandeur & Spiritual Audacity,” is organized by the UCLA Jewish studies department. Among the other speakers and panelists are David Myers, a UCLA professor; Heschel’s daughter, Susannah Heschel, a professor at Dartmouth College; and Holocaust scholar Michael Berenbaum. West’s participation was first reported by the Jewish Journal of Los Angeles.
“It is with dismay that we have been confronted by the outrageous pronouncements of Cornel West, a keynote speaker at the Heschel Conference,” the leadership of Hillel at UCLA said in a statement released Tuesday. The statement called West’s recent statements concerning Israel “an affront to Rabbi Heschel’s pursuit of truth.”
In recent months, West has spoken publicly in support of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement against Israel. During Israel’s operation in Gaza last summer, the former Harvard professor called what he said was the Israeli “massacre” of Palestinians in Gaza “a crime against humanity.”
Todd Presner, director of UCLA’s Alan D. Leve Center for Jewish Studies, told the Jewish Journal on Tuesday that he does not plan to rescind the invitation, saying that West was asked to talk about Heschel and his relationship to the civil rights movement, not Israel. He pointed out that there are 25 other speakers coming to the symposium.
In an open letter to West published in the Jewish Journal, in which he referred to recent interviews in which West has slammed Israel, Judea Pearl, a UCLA professor and president of the Daniel Pearl Foundation, called on West to “excuse yourself from delivering this lecture.”
“No matter how eloquent your speech and how crafty your words, the audience you will face at UCLA will not be able to take them too seriously in light of your recent decision to become a leading propagandist for the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement,” Pearl wrote.
Last month, Presner canceled a prestigious lecture he was to deliver at the University of Illinois over its withdrawal of a job offer to Steven Salaita, a harsh critic of Israel.
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning journalism this Passover.
In this age of misinformation, our work is needed like never before. We report on the news that matters most to American Jews, driven by truth, not ideology.
At a time when newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall. That means for the first time in our 126-year history, Forward journalism is free to everyone, everywhere. With an ongoing war, rising antisemitism, and a flood of disinformation that may affect the upcoming election, we believe that free and open access to Jewish journalism is imperative.
Readers like you make it all possible. Right now, we’re in the middle of our Passover Pledge Drive and we still need 300 people to step up and make a gift to sustain our trustworthy, independent journalism.
Make a gift of any size and become a Forward member today. You’ll support our mission to tell the American Jewish story fully and fairly.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
Join our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.
Only 300 more gifts needed by April 30