26.6.05
Dershowitz: add censorship to his list of liberties
Torture advocate Alan Dershowtiz has attempted to add censorship to his noble list of "civil liberties":
What do you do when somebody wants to publish a book that says you're completely wrong? If you're Alan Dershowitz, the prominent Harvard law professor, and the book is Norman Finkelstein's Beyond Chutzpah: On the Misuse of Anti-Semitism and the Abuse of History, you write the governor of California and suggest that he intervene with the publisher--because the publisher is the University of California Press, which conceivably might be subject to the power of the governor.
Schwarzenegger, showing unusual wisdom, declined to act. The governor's legal affairs secretary wrote Dershowitz, "You have asked for the Governor's assistance in preventing the publication of this book," but "he is not inclined to otherwise exert influence in this case because of the clear, academic freedom issue it presents." In a phone interview Dershowitz denied writing to the Governor, declaring, "My letter to the Governor doesn't exist." But when pressed on the issue, he said, "It was not a letter. It was a polite note."
Why does Harvard keep this cretin on its faculty? He advocates torture; denies and rewrites history; and engages in plagiarism and other dubious practices. Now Dershowitz is attempting to silence people like Finkelstein who want to demonstrate that he is full of shit. I wonder where the "academic standards" crowds are on this one. Maybe still tied up with the Mideast faculty at Columbia.
Torture advocate Alan Dershowtiz has attempted to add censorship to his noble list of "civil liberties":
What do you do when somebody wants to publish a book that says you're completely wrong? If you're Alan Dershowitz, the prominent Harvard law professor, and the book is Norman Finkelstein's Beyond Chutzpah: On the Misuse of Anti-Semitism and the Abuse of History, you write the governor of California and suggest that he intervene with the publisher--because the publisher is the University of California Press, which conceivably might be subject to the power of the governor.
Schwarzenegger, showing unusual wisdom, declined to act. The governor's legal affairs secretary wrote Dershowitz, "You have asked for the Governor's assistance in preventing the publication of this book," but "he is not inclined to otherwise exert influence in this case because of the clear, academic freedom issue it presents." In a phone interview Dershowitz denied writing to the Governor, declaring, "My letter to the Governor doesn't exist." But when pressed on the issue, he said, "It was not a letter. It was a polite note."
Why does Harvard keep this cretin on its faculty? He advocates torture; denies and rewrites history; and engages in plagiarism and other dubious practices. Now Dershowitz is attempting to silence people like Finkelstein who want to demonstrate that he is full of shit. I wonder where the "academic standards" crowds are on this one. Maybe still tied up with the Mideast faculty at Columbia.
