First Person

During the two weeks leading up to a major conference at UCLA to honor the late rabbi and civil rights leader Abraham Joshua Heschel, controversy swirled around one of the event’s two keynote speakers — Cornel West — an outspoken academic who severely criticized Israel during its war last summer with Hamas.

At the May 3-4 conference titled “Moral Grandeur & Spiritual Audacity” however, celebration of Heschel took precedence over the dispute of the preceding weeks.