After an attempted firebombing near the home of one UCLA researcher and repeated harassment that pushed another professor to halt his primate research, UCLA's acting chancellor said Friday that he was taking steps to protect the university and its faculty from extremists in the animal rights movement.
Norman Abrams, who became acting chancellor July 1, said animal rights activists in recent months have mounted what he called an escalating campaign against UCLA professors, researchers and their families.
"These activities have risen to the level of domestic terrorism, and that's what we should call them," Abrams said in an interview Friday, as he announced a series of actions, including plans for stepped-up security at faculty homes.
He also announced that UCLA would double -- to $60,000 -- the size of the reward the FBI has offered for information leading to the arrest and conviction of those responsible for the attempted fire-bombing of a Bel-Air home June 30.
In that incident, a crude explosive was left beside a house occupied by a 70-year-old woman and her tenant. The FBI has said the device, which was lighted but failed to ignite, was powerful enough to have killed the occupants.
It also was apparently planted at the wrong house. The intended target was Lynn Fairbanks, a UCLA professor in the departments of psychiatry and biobehavioral sciences who studies primate behavior.
"On the night of June 30, we paid a visit to Lynn Fairbanks' home," read a communique posted to the website of the North American Animal Liberation Press Office, which often acts as a voice for the underground Animal Liberation Front and other extremist animal rights groups.
The posting said she conducted "painful addiction experiments" on monkeys.
In a brief interview Friday, Fairbanks said the activists' allegations were false. She focuses on primate behavior and the ways vervet monkeys interact with one another, she said.
"I don't do invasive research; I don't kill or torture animals," said Fairbanks, who has worked at UCLA for 30 years.
Also, Abrams and other UCLA officials have said university researchers strictly follow federal laws that regulate the use of animals and ensure that they are treated humanely. They said that all research projects involving animals are subjected to a rigorous application and review process and that federal and state agencies regularly inspect such projects.
