UCLA is drawing sharp criticism from 9/11 survivors and relatives of those killed in the attacks over a planned 25th anniversary program that includes a defense lawyer for the accused mastermind of the plot, along with a Yale academic who has described counterterrorism work as a “racist gravy train.”
The UCLA School of Law is scheduled to launch the event, titled “25 Years After 9/11: Reimagining Freedom, Justice, and Security,” on Thursday, with the program set to wrap on the anniversary of the terror attacks that claimed more than 3,000 lives.
Among the featured voices are several speakers already stirring controversy, including Melanie T. Partow, a defense attorney for Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who has been described as the “principal architect” of the September 11 attacks, and Yale professor Aslı Ü. Bâli, who previously referred to counterterrorism efforts as a “racist gravy train.”
“It’s absolutely absurd,” Jim McCaffrey, who was an FDNY lieutenant on 9/11 and responded to the World Trade Center, told the California Post. “They’re pointing fingers at the victims. We’re the bad guys for being attacked. It’s mind-boggling. What’s going on in academia?”
Sally Regenhard, whose 28-year-old son, firefighter Christian Regenhard, was killed at Ground Zero, voiced similar disbelief, asking, “Can’t 9/11 families get a break?”
“Crazy people say crazy things,” she added, saying it infuriates her that figures tied to the attacks, including Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, have still not been fully brought to justice. “Let them say it another time.”
Partow is described in her UC Irvine School of Law lecturer biography as a civil rights and international human rights litigator. Her background includes a clerkship at the International Criminal Court, and she recently drew attention for her role in issuing an arrest warrant for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Partow has represented Mohammed since at least February 2020 and is listed as a “qualified member of the Military Commissions Defense Organization Civilian Attorney Pool” for detainees held at Guantanamo Bay.
She is scheduled to speak on a panel titled “Torture, Rendition, and Detention: The Erosion of the Rights Regime post 9/11” that will focus on the “increased counterterrorism authority” the US and other countries have shown following the terror attacks.
No victims of the terror attack are listed among the speakers, and there is set to be little discussion about the actual tragedy or the first responders who died that day.
A 15-minute block, between 8:45 a.m. and 9a.m. Friday, is reserved for a moment of “remembrance” for the day’s nearly 3,000 victims. The day’s lunch break occupies a full hour.
UCLA Law describes the event as examining 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.”
Bâli, a professor at Yale Law School, penned a 2020 essay questioning America’s approach to national security that claimed counterterrorism served little purpose other than to justify racism.
“Government agencies compete for funding and when they are able to style themselves as essential to national security, they access more revenue,” she wrote. “Law enforcement across the board has a direct funding incentive to characterize minority communities and dissidents as threat incubators. Counterterrorism serves as a kind of racist gravy train.”
Other speakers include Hussam Ayloush, director of the California Council on American-Islamic Relations, who once compared Israel to Nazi Germany and said it “should be attacked.”
“Israel should be attacked. If you continue to occupy people’s land, every means according to international law to defend and resist the occupation is [in] your hand,” he said just a month after the Oct. 7, 2023 massacre.
Ayloush and Bâli will speak at a panel titled “From Crisis to Legacy: 25 Years of the War on Terror and the Struggle to Reimagine Freedom, Justice, and Security.”
Another speaker, University of Minnesota Law school professor Amna Akbar, once called Luigi Mangione’s murder of Brian Thompson as a “spectacular act of protest.”
“Calls to ‘Free Luigi’ on the streets and inside jails express solidarity not just with one man, but against the catastrophic realities of capitalism, where necessities like health care, food, and housing are financialized commodities that few can truly afford,” she wrote in a January 2025 essay. “This is the system UnitedHealthcare stands for and profits from. This is the system that Mangione (allegedly) took aim at.”
The symposium will also discuss “the ongoing genocide in Gaza” and “White Christian nationalism.”
The event marks the latest controversy surrounding UCLA, which was sued by the Trump administration in February over claims of vile antisemitic acts at the school — including death threats, swastikas scrawled on university buildings and a statue depicting a pig holding a Jewish star and a bag of money.
In May, the Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division sued the university alleging the school allowed students to create “Jewish exclusion zones” and attack their Jewish classmates after the Oct. 7 attacks.
A month earlier, the UCLA student government condemned an appearance by Omer Shem Tov, an Israeli man taken hostage and tortured during 505 days in captivity.
“While we affirm the humanity of all people impacted by violence, we reject the selective platforming of narratives that obscure the broader reality of ongoing state violence,” the UCLA student association said of the event, held on Holocaust Remembrance Day.
UC Regent Jay Sures slammed the UCLA student government, saying he was “disgusted” and “appalled” by the group’s stance.
The university appeared to defend its 9/11 event, telling the Washington Free Beacon that the law school “has a longstanding commitment to academic freedom and to fostering a wide range of scholarly inquiry.”
“Events organized by an individual UCLA Law program, centers, or institutes — and the views expressed — do not imply endorsement by UCLA Law, and neither the language of this symposium nor the views of its speakers should be understood as representing the school as a whole,” the spokesman said. “UCLA Law does not review or approve these choices, nor does the school withdraw invitations because a speaker or viewpoint is sensitive or controversial.”
Professional lawyers can earn continuing legal education (CLE) credits by attending the event, according to UCLA. The credits are mandatory to keep actively practicing law in California.
The California Post contacted UCLA Law and Partow for comment.
