Newsletter: A protest at a UC Berkeley dean’s house

Good morning. I’m Paul Thornton, and it is Saturday, April 13, 2024. Let’s look back at the week in Opinion.

Or, perhaps it’s better to say let’s look back at the week in Opinion writers. One such writer is contributor Erwin Chemerinsky, dean of the UC Berkeley School of Law, where his wife Catherine Fisk is also on the faculty. An expert on constitutional law who has argued cases before the U.S. Supreme Court, Chemerinsky has written op-ed articles in The Times saying the 14th Amendment requires disqualifying former President Trump and urging the justices to protect access to the abortion drug mifepristone, among myriad other topics. He was also the founding dean of UC Irvine Law School, and he chaired the commission that revised the city of Los Angeles charter in the late 1990s. You’d have a hard time finding a more public service-minded scholar in California than Chemerinsky.

He also happens to be Jewish and a supporter of the two-state solution, meaning he supports the creation of a Palestinian state alongside Israel. Last fall, he wrote a Times op-ed article on the withering antisemitism directed at him and others at UC Berkeley since the Oct. 7 attack on Israel by Hamas. By outward appearances Chemerinsky has nonetheless maintained his genial disposition, evidenced by the invitation he extended to law students for dinner parties at his and Fisk’s home near Berkeley.

But after what happened in their backyard Tuesday, Chemerinsky and Fisk may decide never to host students at their home again (and for the record, they indicated the dinner parties they had already scheduled for law students would go forward). As you’ve probably seen by now, a pro-Palestinian law student who was invited and several activists tried to hijack the event, prompting a confrontation with Fisk and Chemersinky.

And why Chemerinsky’s home? Because he’s Jewish? A Zionist? He’s expressed opposition to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government and support for the creation of a Palestinian state, but evidently nothing he actually says matters.

Fisk put her hand on the activist and appeared to grab her, and Chemerinsky demanded she leave while she was still speaking calmly. In my view, those actions are regrettable, but it’s their house, not mine, and certainly not the students.’

The situation in Gaza is unacceptable. Israeli forces have killed more than 33,000 people there since Oct. 7, and Netanyahu has given no indication that he plans on stopping there. But as one reader wrote in a letter to the editor lamenting an aborted attempt at interfaith dialogue between Muslims and Jews in Los Angeles, no one here caused the violence in Gaza — not Chemerinsky and Fisk, and not pro-Palestinian UC Berkeley students.

We don’t have to tear each other down here, and we certainly shouldn’t abuse the hospitality of law professors because they are Jewish. That should go without saying, but sadly it doesn’t in this environment.

“Two murders in Brentwood? That was unusual.” Editorial writer Carla Hall takes us back 30 years ago to the chaotic time she covered, as a Times reporter, the killings of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ron Goldberg, and the police pursuit and murder trial of O.J. Simpson, who died this week. “On Thursday when news of his death broke, a source texted me that he was talking to a 20-something colleague about O.J. and ‘She barely had any idea who he was. LOL,” Hall writes. “Yeah, LOL indeed.”

Benjamin Netanyahu’s government is to blame for rift in historic Israel-U.S. alliance. “In the wake of the Hamas attack, Israel had the support and sympathy of much of the world,” writes The Times editorial board. “But the unremitting fierceness of its actions in Gaza eroded that goodwill so swiftly and completely that even President Biden has expressed increasing levels of dismay over the actions and attitudes of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government.”

A pregnant legal scholar in Arizona says the state’s abortion ban fails the law and families. Caitlin Millat, a law professor at Arizona State University, says that when she was reading her state’s Supreme Court ruling that that a law banning abortion passed in 1864 (nearly half a century before Arizona became a state) was still in effect, she found herself “unconsciously clutching my stomach — a sign that my objections went beyond legal analysis.”

Jack Smith is pushing to get Donald Trump’s Jan. 6 trial moving before the election. The special counsel’s latest filing to the Supreme Court says Trump’s Jan. 6 case should be “remanded for trial,” because whatever immunity the justices find a president might have, that immunity cannot shield Trump from prosecution. Columnist Harry Litman explains why this risky move could be what gets the Jan. 6 trial back on track.

L.A.’s Pershing Square is getting another makeover. Will this time finally be the charm? Is it the most ornate parking garage roof in L.A., or just really unwelcoming park? Whatever it is, downtown L.A.’s Pershing Square has been alienating passersby since 1994, when the park was elevated above street level and took the appearance of a concrete-moated urban fortress. Now, former Times reporter Larry Gordon, who covered Pershing Square’s renovation and reopening in 1994, says what concerns him more than yet another makeover is the deterioration of the downtown neighborhood around the park.

Tenant unions are finding power in numbers to fight L.A.’s housing crisis. Tenant organizers Annie Powers and Leonardo Vilchis-Zarate say that renters banding together in their own buildings as unions may be more effective at addressing the fundamental problem of the housing crisis — keeping people housed — than government providing bare-bones legal representation in eviction court.

More from this week in opinion

From our columnists

• Jonah Goldberg: The latest sign that Republicans are abandoning even their most deeply held principles
• Robin Abcarian: California workers, does your boss bug you after hours and on weekends? This bill is for you
• Jackie Calmes: Trump 1.0 made some world leaders laugh. Trump 2.0 terrifies them

From the op-ed desk

• Think life just keeps getting worse? Try being nostalgic — for the present
• I was homeless in college. California can do more for students who sleep in their cars

From the editorial board

• Financial literacy is important for teens to learn along with math and science
• So many potholes in L.A. — and not enough people to fix them

Letters to the editor

• Will the baseball gods curse the Dodgers over Shohei Ohtani’s home run ball?
• President Biden now wants a cease-fire. Would that help Hamas?
• L.A. shanks its shot at deterring city golf tee-time brokers