UCLA’s top official has condemned a 9/11 event hosted by the college featuring a range of controversial speakers — including the defense lawyer for 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.

The school’s chancellor, Julio Frenk, said in exclusive remarks to the California Post that he supported longtime UCLA professor Judea Pearl, who tore into the university for hosting the lawyer representing the jihadist behind the execution of his journalist son, journalist Daniel Pearl.

“Judea Pearl is a deeply valued member of the UCLA community, and I have profound respect for him, for the memory of his son Daniel, and for his decades-long commitment to combating antisemitism, terrorism and hatred,” Frenk said.

“The brutal murder of Daniel Pearl was an act of unspeakable evil, and I support Judea and his family. We also mourn the thousands of lives lost from the terrorist attack on September 11, 2001, as well as the suffering of countless families and communities.”

He went on to blast event, which covered two days and also included an appearance by a Yale professor who labeled post-9/11 counterterrorism efforts “racist.”

“UCLA’s values are clear. We reject antisemitism and terrorism in all their forms, and we believe our campus must be a place where the dignity of every member of our community is respected,” Frenk continued.

“Nothing about this event at the UCLA School of Law, which we do not endorse, changes or qualifies those commitments.”

Daniel Pearl was decapitated by Mohammed in Pakistan in 2002 after being lured there for a supposed interview with an Islamic scholar. One of Mohammed’s lawyers, Melanie T. Partow, was set to speak at the event on Friday.

Frenk suggested the event — which invited no victims of the attack, but welcomed leftist speakers, including one who said Israel “should be attacked”— had given voice to the wrong guests.

“Academic freedom does not require us to be neutral about antisemitism or terrorism,” said Frenk, who became UCLA’s seventh chancellor in January 2025.

“Speaking at UCLA should never be mistaken for the university’s approval, endorsement, or acceptance of an individual’s viewpoints, or our institution’s indifference to the pain their presence may cause members of our community.

“In this case, I understand why Professor Pearl and others are deeply hurt. Judea’s voice, and the history behind it, deserve to be heard with the seriousness and humanity they demand.”

Judea told The Post that he was taken aback by the event.

“Colleagues inform me that, sadly, UCLA Law School is guilty of such practice: Weaponizing the painful days of 9/11 and 10/7 to promote hateful ideologies,” he said.

He added: “Having lost a son to such an ideology, I stand ashamed of my university.”

The educator added that he felt any 9/11 event should commemorate victims of the attack.

“A September 11th event should be used to commemorate the victims of that attack: Innocent Americans,” he said.

Partow is a civil rights and international human rights litigator, according to her lecturer biography at the UC Irvine School of Law. She clerked at the International Criminal Court and recently made headlines for issuing an arrest warrant for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Partow has represented Mohammed since at least February 2020 and is a “qualified member of the Military Commissions Defense Organization Civilian Attorney Pool for the detainees held at Guantanamo Bay.”

She was 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.

Other speakers included Yale professor Aslı Ü. Bâli, who once referred to counterterrorism as a “racist gravy train”; Hussam Ayloush, director of the California Council on American-Islamic Relations, who once compared Israel to Nazi Germany and said it “should be attacked,” and University of Minnesota law School professor Amna Akbar, who once called Luigi Mangione’s alleged murder of UnitedHealthCare CEO Brian Thompson a “spectacular act of protest.”

The tone-deaf event comes as UCLA has faced lawsuits from the Trump administration over allegedly failing to address antisemitism on campus or protect Jewish students and Israeli employees.

9/11 victims lambasted the event.

“It’s absolutely absurd,” Jim McCaffrey, an FDNY lieutenant at the time of the attacks who responded to the Twin Towers, 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 firefighter son, Christian, 28, died at Ground Zero, asked: “Can’t 9/11 families get a break?”

“Crazy people say crazy things,” she added, saying her blood boils that 9/11 perpetrators like Khalid Sheikh Mohammed have not been brought to justice. “Let them say it another time.”

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.”

The symposium was also set to 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 previously 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.”

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