O.J. at UCI--Controversial Figure’s Visit Sparks Fuss

IRVINE — Three weeks ago and unbeknownst to university officials, O.J. Simpson slipped onto the UC Irvine campus to speak to students at the invitation of a criminology professor.

The university hasn’t calmed down since.

Peppered by angry phone calls and hate mail since news of Simpson’s May 21 visit to the seminar hit the campus newspaper, one school dean has been busy distancing the university from the decision to have the ex-football star speak. And last Wednesday, the professor who issued the invitation without telling the university bowed to pressure to have a lawyer with the Nicole Brown Simpson Charitable Foundation speak to the class.

Simpson’s visit to a seminar taught by William Thompson, a former member of his criminal defense team, was one in a series of public appearances on college campuses. Last year, he spoke at Oxford University and at El Camino College in Torrance. He is mulling an invitation from former counsel Alan M. Dershowitz to speak at Harvard.

Simpson’s surprise appearance in Thompson’s 10-week course entitled “Seminar on the O.J. Simpson Case” has the campus in an uproar, even though many of the 25 students who took the course welcomed the opportunity to talk with him.

“After we did the story, people were calling in disgust that we had such a person come to the school,” said Kiersten Robinson, a junior who is managing editor of New University, the campus paper. “We didn’t get any calls applauding the professor for having him speak.”

Thompson’s boss, Dan Stokols--dean of the social ecology school--mailed a letter to several protesting domestic violence groups. In the letter, Stokols denied the university’s “support or endorsement” of Simpson and said he learned of the visit after the fact--from the campus newspaper.

“I share some of those feelings of concern, frankly, but does that mean we should bend to censorship?” Stokols said Saturday. “I don’t accept that.”

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Among the most vocal complaints came from the nonprofit organization named for Simpson’s ex-wife and dedicated to fighting domestic violence.

Nicole Brown Simpson and her friend, Ronald Lyle Goldman, were slain outside her Brentwood home on June 12, 1994. In 1996, Simpson was acquitted by a Los Angeles jury of both murders. This year, the Brown and Goldman families won a wrongful death suit against Simpson in connection with the deaths.

At the urging of foundation members, Merritt McKeon, an attorney who co-authored a book with Brown’s father on domestic violence, spoke to Thompson’s class last week.

Among students in the class, who had spent five weeks before Simpson’s visit examining the details of the criminal case, his appearance was the highlight of the semester.

“It wasn’t Simpson visiting the ‘O.J. Simpson Appreciation Society’ or stopping by for a fan club visit,” said Paul Brar, 27, a student auditing the class. “He was asked a number of really tough questions on the case.

“From a sheer thrill standpoint, this opportunity to interrelate to someone who is a historical figure, well, you just don’t get the chance very often,” he added.

Senior Lissete Garcia, 21, called Simpson’s visit a matter of academic freedom.

“I feel bad for the professor, because I know his intentions were not at all to get us to try to support Mr. Simpson,” Garcia said. “When Mr. Simpson came, I felt like it would be a good idea for him to speak about a case he would know more about than anyone. If you don’t invite people who are controversial to a university, you might not learn a lot.”

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The 20-minute lecture, followed by more than 2 1/2 hours of questions and answers on Bruno Magli shoes and bloody gloves, was the flashiest part of the seminar. Thompson decided to offer the course at the last minute, after another class he planned to teach fell through. Thompson, an expert on the use of DNA in criminal cases, was a key member of the defense at Simpson’s criminal trial.

Thompson said he called Simpson on a whim sometime in May to ask him to speak to the class, and agreed to Simpson’s only condition: to keep the visit a secret.

But from the moment Simpson walked unaccompanied onto campus at dusk, word seeped out.

An hour into the seminar, enough passersby had glimpsed Simpson in Thompson’s tiny classroom through the door’s window to draw a large crowd. The campus newspaper got wind of the visit from a student who ran out of class and over to the editor’s apartment.

Even on the relatively deserted campus at night, the class of 25 swelled to more than 100 by the end of the first hour. At times mesmerized and at times cheering Simpson, students were glued to their seats. Dozens crowded around Simpson during a break seeking autographs.

For Thompson, who kept the visit secret until walking into the classroom with Simpson and “seeing the jaws drop,” the ensuing firestorm has all been worth it.

“I remember in my graduate career, what an impression it made when people who were notorious, controversial showed up,” he said. “It seemed to me that this would be a great opportunity.”

The experiment seemed to pay off.

“Usually I lose students by the end of a three-hour class. This time I was gaining,” Thompson said. “I had to apologize to one of my colleagues. He said all his students found out about it and defected.”