Margaret Peters, the associate director of UCLA’s Burkle Center for International Relations, accused the CBS editor in chief of weaponizing free speech against liberals
A UCLA political science professor threatened to resign from her leadership role at the university’s research center for international relations if CBS News editor in chief Bari Weiss is allowed to deliver an annual lecture about the future of journalism.
Weiss was set to deliver the annual Daniel Pearl Memorial Lecture at the UCLA Burkle Center for International Relations next week. But the event, which was expected to bring a wave of protesters, was canceled after CBS’s security team “raised the issue of safety and asked for additional measures of security,” a source familiar with the matter told the Washington Free Beacon. The university is “seriously considering now reinviting Weiss at a later date in person or virtually,” the source added.
The Burkle Center’s associate director, Margaret Peters, said she would resign from her leadership position if Weiss is allowed to share her thoughts. She accused Weiss of using free speech to attack liberals and argued that delivering the lecture would legitimize the Free Press founder, the Daily Bruin reported.
“To invite somebody who is working against that mission in highly powerful places just seems like anathema in the university mission,” Peters, who also serves as the Department of Political Science’s vice chair for graduate studies, said.
Weiss has repeatedly faced left-wing criticism since taking over CBS News. She faced particular heat after delaying a 60 Minutes story decrying the deportation of illegal aliens from the United States to a maximum security prison in El Salvador—she explained that it “didn’t advance the ball” and that the outlet needed “to get the principals on the record and on camera.” The correspondent behind the story, Sharyn Alfonsi, was up in arms about the delay, but there was precedent for additional scrutiny: In 2021, she falsely reported that Florida governor Ron DeSantis (R.) gave preferential treatment to a campaign donor to distribute coronavirus vaccines.
This isn’t the first time Peters has made a radical demand. In 2018, she signed a petition calling to develop “actionable steps” to establish UCLA as a “sanctuary campus.” The petition urged the university to provide legal services for illegal immigrants and to reaffirm its “policy to not cooperate with federal ICE authorities regarding deportations or immigration raids.”
Peters also signed a petition in August criticizing UCLA for agreeing to arrest anti-Israel agitators and ban radical student groups in response to the Trump administration suspending roughly $600 million in federal funds over its handling of anti-Semitism.
Far-left radicals had pushed the Burkle Center to cancel Weiss’s event. Code Pink, which has worked on behalf of Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, called on its members to send pre-written letters urging the center to nix the lecture.
“You must understand that Bari Weiss is a mouthpiece for the rich and powerful people who are tearing this world apart,” the letter, which was sent nearly 11,000 times, read. “By inviting Bari Weiss to your school, you are engaging with Israeli and American propaganda that has been used to kill thousands of people.”
Code Pink suggested the Burkle Center instead invite “true journalists” like Wael Dahdouh, the Gaza bureau chief of Hamas-linked news outlet Al Jazeera. Israel also identified Dahdouh’s son, who was killed in an IDF airstrike, as a member of Palestinian Islamic Jihad, a Gaza-based terror group.
Code Pink also earned support from Hasan Piker, a popular streamer who once said, “America deserved 9/11.” When a member told him about their campaign during an anti-ICE rally, Piker shouted, “Hell yeah, fuck Bari Weiss,” and gave the camera the middle finger.
Code Pink cofounder Jodie Evans, who’s married to a suspected Chinese Communist Party operative, lauded the cancellation on Instagram, captioning the post “Victory!!!” Piker posted, “total @codepink victory.”
Weiss’s presentation, meanwhile, was part of a lecture series honoring Daniel Pearl, a journalist kidnapped and beheaded by al Qaeda terrorists in Pakistan in 2002.
Neither Peters nor the Burkle Center for International Relations returned requests for comment.
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