CBS News’ Bari Weiss appearance at UCLA is canceled over security concerns

By Hannah Miller and Maxwell Adler, Bloomberg

CBS News Editor-in-Chief Bari Weiss was supposed to speak this month on the future of journalism at the University of California at Los Angeles. Not anymore.

UCLA said Thursday the Feb. 27 event has been canceled, citing security concerns raised by Weiss. The speech was part of the university’s Daniel Pearl Memorial Lecture series, honoring the Jewish American journalist murdered by Islamic jihadist groups in 2002.

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“We always follow our security team’s guidance,” CBS said in an email. “This situation is no different. We are working with the university to reschedule for a different date.”

The lecture series is organized by UCLA’s Burkle Center for International Relations. The Los Angeles Times reported that several employees at the center expressed opposition to Weiss’ appearance. The newspaper also said the university was expecting a large number of students to protest the event.

The school newspaper, the Daily Bruin, reported that Margaret Peters, the associate director of the Burkle Center, threatened to resign if the event was rescheduled.

“The university was ready to implement a comprehensive security plan for this event, developed in coordination with campus safety and external law enforcement partners,” Steve Lurie, UCLA associate vice chancellor and chief safety officer, said in a statement to Bloomberg. “UCLA remains committed to supporting public programming which represents a wide range of viewpoints, with safety planning tailored to each event.”

Weiss is often accompanied by bodyguards. She became editor-in-chief of CBS News in October after the network’s owner, Paramount Skydance Corp., acquired her media startup the Free Press.

A controversial figure for her support of Israel and her criticism of mainstream media for being too liberal, Weiss previously worked on the opinion teams at the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times. She left the latter in July 2020, criticizing management for not defending her against alleged bullying by colleagues upset with her views.

Judea Pearl, the father of Daniel Pearl, said in a social media post that he hopes the lecture happens soon.

“There’s lots of hateful noise out there. First, UCLA has NOT canceled Bari Weiss,” he wrote. “It was Bari’s/CBS security team who asked for postponement due to insufficient safety measures. Second, UCLA is still considering inviting Bari to deliver the Daniel Pearl Memorial Lecture, in person, at a later date.”

Since taking over CBS News, Weiss has overseen layoffs and made the controversial decision to delay a 60 Minutes segment that focused on the deportation of migrants to a foreign prison after promos for the episode had already aired. The episode aired later with few changes made.

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