Author: Rebecca Trounson

An Iraqi-born priest in Los Angeles has been named to head the Syrian Catholic Church in the United States, a small Eastern Rite sect affiliated with the Roman Catholic Church.

The Vatican announced Monday that Pope Benedict XVI had appointed Chorbishop Yousif Habash of Sacred Heart Syriac Catholic Church in North Hollywood as bishop of the Eparchy of Our Lady of Deliverance in Newark N.J. He succeeds Bishop Joseph Younan, who was appointed in January as patriarch of the church, which is based in Beirut, Lebanon.

As bishop of the U.S. eparchy, Habash will oversee the affairs of 13,800 Syrian Catholics, according to the announcement. A chorbishop is a sort of auxiliary bishop and an eparchy is like a Catholic diocese.

Habash, a native of the northern Iraqi region centered in Mosul, drew attention last month when he complained about the plight of Iraqi Christians and said their situation now is worse than before the 2003 U.S.-led invasion.

In prewar Mosul, "there were not the rivers of blood like today," he said in an interview published in the Tidings, the newspaper of the Los Angeles Catholic archdiocese. "Christians were not dying like insects." His remarks followed the violent deaths of eight Christians in Mosul during a two-week period in February. The pope also spoke out about the killings.

— Mitchell Landsberg

C.L. Max Nikias, USC’s provost and second-in-command, will become its next president, succeeding Steven B. Sample on August 3 at the helm of the 34,000-student university in Los Angeles, school officials announced Thursday.

Nikias, 57, a Cypriot-born engineer, was long mentioned as the favorite inside candidate to become USC’s 11th president, so much so that some trustees reportedly did not even want to conduct a national search for outside candidates. But USC trustees went ahead with that search, interviewing 75 other educators before returning to a man well-known and well-liked on campus.

"It is a testament to Max Nikias’ abilities that, from such an impressive group of educators, he was unanimously recommended by the advisory committee," Edward P. Roski Jr., chairman of USC’s trustees, said in a statement. "During his 19 years as a faculty member and administrator at USC, he has provided distinguished service to the university in a variety of roles. He is a remarkable and inspiring leader, a brilliant scholar, and the best possible person to lead our university forward."

Nikias, former dean of USC’s engineering school, will have big shoes to fill. Sample has been president since 1991, with a longevity that is rare in American academia, and helped elevate the university to new peaks of academic prestige, financial resources and civic engagement.

"This incredible, wide-ranging university represents an electric environment, one remarkably skilled at producing new ideas and new leaders to strengthen our society," Nikias said in a statement issued Thursday. "Moving USC forward, and accelerating its breathtaking momentum, strikes me as the most rewarding endeavor in American higher education today."

— Larry Gordon

Photo: USC Provost C.L. Max Nikias will become the school’s next president in August. Credit: USC

The U.S. Supreme Court has declined to hear an appeal from an Anglican congregation that was evicted from its La Crescenta church in October after it lost a legal battle with the Episcopal Church.

A majority of congregants of St. Luke’s of the Mountains voted in 2006 to break away from the Episcopal Church. Both the national church and its Los Angeles diocese then sued to retain St. Luke’s property, including its landmark stone church.

California courts have ruled repeatedly against the breakaway parish, saying the property was held in trust for the diocese and the national denomination. In October, the state Supreme Court declined to hear the case and a Los Angeles County Superior Court judge then ordered the St. Luke’s congregation to leave and turn the property over to the diocese. They did so, later moving to rented space in Glendale.

Leaders of the ousted congregation and its attorneys have said they hoped the U.S. Supreme Court would establish a uniform approach for state law to follow in church property disputes.

— Rebecca Trounson

Nine days after an off-campus student party mocked Black History Month, UC San Diego went through a day of protests, tumult and self-examination Wednesday, especially concerning the small number of African American students enrolled at the beachside campus.

University administrators sponsored a teach-in on racial tolerance that attracted a standing-room-only crowd of more than 1,200 students, faculty and staff to an auditorium in the student center. But halfway through what was to be a two-hour session in response to the offensive racial stereotypes at the Feb. 15 "Compton Cookout" party, most students walked out in protest.

They then held their own noisy but peaceful rally outside the building. Administrators may have thought the teach-in “would make us quiet,” said Fnann Keflezighi, vice chairman of the Black Student Union. But she said minority students don’t believe that UC San Diego will take significant steps to make them feel more comfortable on campus and increase their numbers.

The controversial party, she and others contended, was just the spark that ignited new activism about long-simmering issues at the university. Many wore special black and white T-shirts that proclaimed: “Real Pain, Real Action, 1.3%” — a reference to the percentage of African Americans among the campus’ undergraduates, thought to be the lowest in the UC system.

The teach-in moderator, Mentha Hynes-Wilson, an African American who is dean of students at UCSD’s Thurgood Marshall College, continued the meeting for several hundred people who remained in the room after the walkout. "I was not necessarily offended or taken aback by their actions,” she said of the student protest. “That’s what they needed to do, and we need to honor that.”

UC San Diego Chancellor Marye Anne Fox attended the teach-in but did not speak publicly. Administrators said the campus is taking many steps to boost recruitment of African American students and to provide more counseling and security on campus. The university is also investigating whether it can discipline the organizers of the off-campus party, which invited guests to dress like ghetto caricatures from Compton and eat chicken and watermelon.

Several days after the party, racial tensions were raised further when a satire group on campus used a derogatory term about African Americans on a student television show; the student station has been temporarily suspended, as has student government funding for some other publications.

— Larry Gordon, reporting from San Diego

Photo: Amid a rally of thousands, student chant in solidarity after walking out of a university organized "Teach In" on February 24, 2010 on the campus of UCSD in La Jolla. Credit: Don Bartletti  / Los Angeles Times

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After pressing the case for Tibetan autonomy with President Obama in Washington, the Dalai Lama said Saturday that he is encouraged by what he sees as rising support for the Tibetan cause among Chinese intellectuals, although he said the Chinese government remains "hardened" against him.

The spiritual leader of Tibetan Buddhism arrived in Los Angeles on Friday and planned to spend the weekend here in support of Whole Child International, a nonprofit organization that works on behalf of orphaned and abandoned children. In an interview with The Times, he acknowledged that there had been no progress in the latest round of talks with China over his call for greater autonomy in Tibet.

Still, he said he found some reasons to cling to hope that the standoff could thaw. "The number of Chinese intellectuals and writers [coming] out, they openly support our middle way approach and [are] very critical of their own government policy," he said, speaking in English.

He said Chinese intellectuals had become more sympathetic to Tibet as a result of pro-autonomy demonstrations in 2008 that prompted a swift, violent response from the Chinese authorities. Since then, he said, he has met many Chinese who say they were unaware of the Tibetan issue until the demonstrations. Now, he said, they find his call for a self-governing Tibet that remains a part of China to be "very sensible, very logical."

He said Chinese writers had published 800 articles in support of Tibetan autonomy, 300 of them published in China itself. Those figures could not be independently verified.

The 14th Dalai Lama was the administrative and spiritual leader of Tibet before going into exile in India in 1959 when China cemented control over the Himalayan region. China has claimed not only political authority in Tibet, which it considers to be an autonomous province, but also control over the leadership of Tibetan Buddhism. The Dalai Lama presides over a government in exile in India.

Sitting cross-legged and barefoot in the presidential suite of a Beverly Hills hotel, the Dalai Lama briefly discussed his Thursday meeting with Obama. He downplayed his goals for the meeting and said he had met with the president because "it was my duty to inform or report what the situation was in the relationship with the Chinese government."

Asked if he saw any progress in that relationship, he said, "No progress. … Always the Chinese authorities [are] very hardened. Not only [against] Tibetans, but also their policy toward their own people."

His Los Angeles visit included a luncheon speech Saturday, as well as a public address scheduled for Sunday at Gibson Amphitheatre, where he will be joined by musician Sheryl Crow.

— Mitchell Landsberg

The National Science Foundation and USC’s School of Cinematic Arts announced a new partnership Friday that will help scientists work with media professionals to help the public understand science.

The collaboration, which is the first of its kind, will combine the science foundation’s scientific background  and USC’s artistic knowledge, said Elizabeth Daley, dean of the university’s School of Cinematic Arts.  

The facility will be dubbed the Creative Science Studio and will be based at USC’s downtown L.A. campus. It will open in the fall.

The science foundation and USC made the announcement Friday at the annual meeting of the American Assn. for the Advancement of Science in San Diego.

Daley said the partnership is a unique opportunity to use the skills of film, television and interactive media majors to help the public understand science.

“Science is so often unintelligible to the average person,” she said.

The partnership will allow researchers to create engaging outreach products, such as videos, and provide student entertainment producers with access to state-of-the-art resources to enhance depictions of science.

–Nicole Santa Cruz

UC Berkeley has received a $16-million donation from the Evelyn and Walter Haas Jr. Fund to expand academic programs in various aspects of ethnic, religious and sexual diversity and to fund scholarships for low-income community college students who transfer to the campus, officials announced Thursday.

Among other things, the donation will fund five new faculty chairs in diversity-related research, including one of the nation’s first endowed chairs on lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender equity issues. It will also be used to add more American Cultures courses, which are required of all UC Berkeley undergraduates, and to revise some to emphasize community service outside the classroom. And $1.5 million will be set aside to match donations for financial aid for transfer students.

— Larry Gordon

UC San Diego leaders and civil rights activists have condemned a student party held Monday that mocked Black History Month with a ghetto-themed "Compton Cookout."

Campus administrators said Wednesday that they were investigating whether the off-campus party and its Facebook invitation violated the university’s code of conduct and whether its sponsors should be disciplined. Members of Pi Kappa Alpha were identified as among the organizers, but the fraternity president has criticized the event and said his club did not sponsor it.

In an e-mail to students and staff, UC San Diego Chancellor Marye Anne Fox said the party showed "blatant disregard of our campus values." She said the university would hold a teach-in next Wednesday "to discuss the importance of mutual respect and civility."

Penny Rue, vice chancellor for student affairs, said the probe would examine whether the fraternity was involved and whether it should face sanctions. She said that it was premature to discuss discipline for individual students but that she wanted partygoers to understand how much pain they had caused, especially to African American students.

Rue said she did not know how many people attended the event.

Promising a taste of "life in the ghetto," the Facebook invitation contained many racist stereotypes. For example, it urged women to dress as "ghetto chicks" who "usually have gold teeth, start fights and drama, and wear cheap clothes." It said the menu would include chicken and watermelon.

In an e-mail Wednesday, Garron Engstrom, president of Pi Kappa Alpha, emphasized that the party was not planned or endorsed by the club. "The fraternity regrets the display of ignorance and error-of-judgment made by any individual members who may have attended or were associated via social media with the racially offensive party," he wrote. "These actions are in direct violation of Pike’s code of conduct, and appropriate disciplinary actions will be taken."

History professor Danny Widener, who directs the African American studies program at the campus, said he was outraged but not surprised by the party. He said African American students make up less than 2% of undergraduates at UC San Diego, which he described as inhospitable to them. "The campus climate is one in which you are constantly regarded as a statistical anomaly at best," he said.

The professor also criticized Fox’s response as "tepid" and urged strong action against the party organizers, including expulsion if they are found to have used UC computers or facilities to send the invitation.

Chris Strudwick-Turner, vice president of the Los Angeles Urban League, also urged a tough response. "If campus climate is important, a message needs to be sent that this is not acceptable," she said.

In Sacramento, Assemblyman Isadore Hall III (D-Compton) said leaders of the Legislature’s black, Latino, Asian-Pacific Islander, gay and women’s caucuses would gather outside the Capitol on Thursday to condemn the party.

— Larry Gordon

The Vatican has begun the search for a successor to Cardinal Roger Mahony of Los Angeles, who is expected to step down early next year as head of the nation’s largest Roman Catholic archdiocese.

The archdiocese distributed an e-mail memo to priests and lay leaders this week confirming that the search is underway and asking its parishes to join in a prayer enlisting God’s help in finding "a shepherd who will be an example of goodness to your people and who will fill our hearts and minds with the truth of the Gospel."

The memo surfaced Thursday in a blog, Whispers in the Loggia, which closely follows Catholic affairs.

Mahony, who has led the Los Angeles archdiocese for more than two decades, turns 74 on Feb. 27, putting him one year shy of the usual retirement age for his post. The cardinal noted in his blog last month that this would be his last full year as archbishop. His has been a tumultuous tenure, marked both by his emergence as a leader in the immigrant rights movement and by criticism of his handling of the church’s sexual abuse scandals. There has been speculation that the Vatican may be looking for a Latino prelate to succeed Mahony, whose archdiocese — encompassing Los Angeles, Ventura and Santa Barbara counties — now has a flock estimated to be 75% Latino.

Tod Tamberg, a spokesman for the archdiocese, said there was nothing unusual in the timing of the succession process.

"It would be normal for the Vatican to have begun gathering names of possible successors for any diocese in which the bishop is celebrating his 74th birthday," Tamberg said. "The bishop is talking to his priests and professional staff, who would also know this."

— Mitchell Landsberg

Photo: L.A. Times file