Long ago, when I was a student at UC Berkeley in the 1980s, academic institutions thrived on healthy and passionate dialogue and debate. I remember when the university invited Colonel Oliver North to speak on campus. Although almost every student irrationally despised the man (we were all young liberals in college), we looked forward to attending his talk. We wanted to discuss and debate him, hear his opinions and justifications, and hopefully let him see other points of view while we yearned to glean an understanding of his.
Sadly, those days are long gone. No longer are the halls of academia environments for discussion and intellectual growth; instead, they have become as one-dimensional and fascist as the USSR during the Stalin regime.
There may be no greater offender of this intellectual authoritarianism than UCLA, which has now canceled Bari Weiss, the editor-in-chief of CBS News, from being on campus.
The details and reasons behind canceling one of the most important news personalities in this nation are even more despicable than they at first seem and are examples of prejudice and insidious anti-Semitism.
Weiss was to have spoken at the Daniel Pearl Memorial Lecture at the Burkle Center at UCLA. For those who don’t remember, Daniel Pearl was the Wall Street Journal reporter who was kidnapped and murdered by terrorists in Pakistan in early 2002, just four months after 9/11. Established in 2002 by his family and friends, the Daniel Pearl Memorial Lecture series celebrates the life and memory of Daniel Pearl, a prominent journalist who dedicated his life to bringing joy and understanding to the world.This annual lecture series in journalism and international relations is given each year by scholars, journalists or policy makers who have contributed original analyses or constructive approaches to problems of international concern. Past speakers include Bob Woodward, Jake Tapper, Anderson Cooper, and a host of liberal icons. Perhaps the best example of the yearly speakers was in 2017, when the speaker and topic were “Bret Stephens, Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist for the Wall Street Journal, ‘On Maintaining Intellectual Integrity in the Age of Trump.’” There have occasionally been conservative speakers, but as Daniel, of blessed memory, was a liberal, the majority of the speakers have been on the left.
Ms. Weiss was scheduled months ago to speak on February 27. She is a brilliant woman who previously was an editor at the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times. She described herself as a “left-leaning centrist” to Joe Rogan in 2019, and according to the Washington Post, Weiss "portrays herself as a liberal uncomfortable with the excesses of left-wing culture" and has sought to "position herself as a reasonable liberal concerned that far-left critiques stifled free speech." In 2025, upon getting her position at CBS, the New Republic called her "anti-woke, anti-trans, and pro-Israel." Weiss has stated she voted for Mitt Romney, Hillary Clinton, and Joe Biden in the last three presidential elections. She identifies herself as queer, was married to a man for three years, and is now married to a woman with whom she has two children, but is passionately opposed to the gender dysphoria movement that the left is inflicting upon our children. It would seem that she is an ideal speaker for this lecture series. Except…
As much as anything, Weiss has always been a Zionist who understands the need for a Jewish homeland. And this is why she has now been canceled at UCLA.
Almost 11,000 people, most of whom are not UCLA students, petitioned the Burkle Center to remove her. Led by Code Pink, a leftist organization funded by billionaire Neville Singham (who has spent years and millions of dollars promoting the Chinese Communist Party and who is married to the Code Pink founder), the group campaigned against her because, according to them, “She has a history of flagrant xenophobic remarks about Palestinians, Muslims, and Arabs.”
Simply put, in their warped worldview, one of the most important journalists in our nation should be prohibited from speaking at UCLA because she is a Zionist. Because Ms. Weiss believes there should be a Jewish homeland, that there is no historical “Palestine,” and that the Muslim regimes that want to destroy Israel should be stopped, she should have no voice according to these fanatical leftists.
Even worse for these fascist leftists who seek to rid the world of any opinion but their own, Bari Weiss doesn’t fit their mold. Like Larry Elder, a black man who is conservative, Bari Weiss doesn’t fit into what they feel a queer Jewish woman should be. So rather than try to understand her perspective, they have successfully sought to remove her voice entirely.
Code Pink is an awful organization that is a well funded arm of leftism, so none of this should come as a surprise. The true sadness is how UCLA demonstrated its own hatred for conservatism, dialogue, and Israel by capitulating to a group that is not even composed of students.
The Burkle Center, whose mission is to “promote discussion of international relations, U.S. foreign policy, and complex issues of global cooperation and conflict,” has, in canceling her, acted in direct contradiction to its mission statement. By silencing her voice, they are demonstrating that they are not interested in discussion unless it is in sync with the values of their leadership. Burkle Center Associate Director Margaret Peters made the decision, along with her colleagues (who can all be reached at [email protected]), not because she is pro-Trump or conservative, but for one simple reason: Bari Weiss is pro-Israel. She understands the Islamic threat to Western civilization, the evils of Hamas, and the dangers of Iran.
In combination with the violent anti-Israel rallies at UCLA, this latest act of anti-Semitism demonstrates exactly what the values of the UCLA administration really are. They seek a singular voice against Israel and Jews—not a discussion about the complex subtleties of politics in the Middle East, but an erasure of anything that contradicts the values of the far left.
When the halls of universities become like the hallways of the 1950 Politburo, America’s future is in jeopardy, and the enemy is within. We can only hope that, through the efforts of all of us, the Trump administration (being led in this fight brilliantly by Leo Terrell) and Congress, universities can be healed and returned to their former greatness as environments of learning and real discussions where people can disagree without being disagreeable.
Until then, shame on UCLA and every university that seeks the fascism of a single voice.
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