Slain Journalist’s Father Gives Prize to Foundation

The father of slain journalist Daniel Pearl donated a prize awarded to him Thursday by the London School of Economics to a foundation established in memory of his son.

Judea Pearl of Encino received 10,000 pounds--about $15,000--with the Lakatos Award, a prize given for outstanding work in the philosophy of science.

Pearl, a professor of computer science at UCLA, was honored for his book “Causality: Models, Reasoning and Inference,” an analysis of statistics, artificial intelligence and probability theory.

His 38-year-old son disappeared Jan. 23 in Pakistan while working on a story for the Wall Street Journal about Islamic radicals there. A videotape showing Daniel Pearl’s slaying was obtained by the U.S. Consulate in Karachi a month later.

According to a statement prepared by the Daniel Pearl Foundation, Judea Pearl told a London audience: “My family and I have gone through the worst of times in the past few months. My son Daniel was abducted and murdered in Pakistan earlier this year, and until two weeks ago, I was not sure whether I could muster the strength to come accept this honor.”

The statement also said that the chief defendant in the kidnapping and killing of Daniel Pearl, Ahmad Omar Saeed Sheikh, was a graduate of the London School of Economics.

“Danny would have encouraged me to go ahead with the lecture as planned, in symbolic defiance of his murderers’ attempt to spread fear and despair across the globe,” Pearl said in the statement.

The Daniel Pearl Foundation, according to its Web site, www.danielpearl.org, was established to promote “cross-cultural understanding through responsible journalism and innovative communication.”