UCLA Professor of Computer Science and Statistics Judea Pearl was born in 1936 in Tel Aviv, then British Mandate for Palestine, to Polish Jewish immigrant parents. In 1960, he emigrated to the U.S. to pursue graduate studies in electrical engineering and physics. A recipient of the Turing Award, the 87-year-old academic is best known for “championing the probabilistic approach to artificial intelligence and the development of Bayesian networks.”
Amid the emergence of Pro-Palestinian protests on college campuses across the country, Pearl wrote on Thursday: “As I write this message I am receiving word that encampments are beginning to be built at UCLA. It reminds me of Kafka’s story, where he woke up to find his hometown occupied by horse-eating Huns, acting as though they own the town. I’ll be using my Israeli flag for protection.”
As I write this message I am receiving word that encampments are beginning to be built at UCLA.
It reminds me of Kafka’s story, where he woke up to find his hometown occupied by horse-eating Huns, acting as though they own the town. I’ll be using my Israeli flag for protection.
— Judea Pearl (@yudapearl) April 25, 2024
[Note: Pearl is likely referring to the Kafka story ‘A Page from an Old Document,’ where carnivorous nomads invade and take over a “civilized” town and attack a living ox “from all sides to tear pieces from its warm flesh with their teeth.”]
Judea Pearl is the father of the late Wall Street Journal journalist Daniel Pearl, who was kidnapped and murdered in 2002 by terrorists in Pakistan connected with Al-Qaeda and the International Islamic Front.
As seen in the trailer of With My Whole Broken Heart (above), a documentary which includes the story of his son’s murder, Pearl said of the narrative, “This is our way of taking revenge…we must continue.”