Alan Dershowitz
(Getty Images/Lior Mizrahi)
“McCarthyism is alive and well at Harvard University,” Harvard Law Professor Emeritus Alan Dershowitz says, condemning and vowing to fight the McCarthyism tactics a student petition calls for against anyone who worked for, or supported, the Trump Administration.
“Students are Harvard now want to set up, kind of, reeducation camps and moral rehabilitation centers and institutions for vetting people who had the chutzpah to work in the Trump Administration,” Dershowitz says in a video posted Thursday on his YouTube channel.
“They want to censor them. They want to prevent them from speaking at Harvard. They want to prevent them from teaching at Harvard,” Dershowitz says, declaring the students hypocrites for claiming they want diversity:
“These are the same people who claim they want diversity – that’s the last thing they want.
“They want people at Harvard who think like them, vote like them, look like them and act like them.”
“I’ve seen the petition: it’s even worse than I thought,” Dershowitz says:
“It calls for, essentially, the creation of reeducation camps, like in communist China or that existed in apartheid South Africa, where you hold people to account like they did during the Cultural Revolution for what they had done.”
If enacted, the petition would create “Truth Squads” and install McCarthyism, Dershowitz warns:
“It calls for ‘the full vetting of speakers for their role in undermining commitments to truth and holding them fully accountable for that complicity.’ McCarthyism, pure and simple.”
“It says that Harvard, quote, ‘has the responsibility to boldly confront Trump Administration alumni invited to speak at Harvard about their collaboration or passive acceptance’ – passive acceptance – in other words, not even speaking out.”
“Not to hire any outgoing Trump officials,” Dershowitz says. “In other words, to turn Harvard into an official radical institution, which hires only people who vote for the candidates and support the candidates that Harvard has, as an institution, supported.
“Well, I’m not going to stand for that,” the famed civil rights lawyer promises, saying he would provide free legal services to any victims of Harvard’s McCarthyism:
“The idea that having people express different views from the consensus on the university is, somehow, going to corrupt and destroy the university is pure McCarthyism.
“I will challenge these policies if they’re enacted, under civil rights law.
“If it comes into being, I will challenge it. I will represent, pro bono, students and faculty and potential faculty who are victimized by this McCarthyism.”
Dershowitz said that his only regret that he’s now retired from Harvard “is not being there to stand up to these bullies.”
“They have an enemy in me” if they want to deny any Americans their constitutional rights, Dershowitz says:
“I’m going to fight back. If students are trying to deny Americans their First Amendment rights and their due-process rights, they have an enemy in me. Not an ally, not a supporter, not a patriarchal somebody who is going to forgive their sins.”
“If this petition comes to Harvard, it’s coming to a university near you,” Dershowitz warns:
“And, let me tell you: if this petition comes into being at Harvard, it’s coming to a university near you. Things don’t stop at Harvard. Things start at Harvard. And so, it must be stopped at Harvard. Harvard University must not be allowed to become Communist China, with reeducation camps and vetting and making people justify and making people go to moral retraining and apologize publicly for what they did.”
Dershowitz says he has been targeted for defending President Donald Trump during the impeachment trial – but, he’ll never apologize for do so because he was defending the Constitution:
“Let me tell you: I will never apologize for what I did. I defended the Constitution against an unconstitutional impeachment by the Democratic House of Representatives. I’m proud of what I did. If I were at Harvard, I would be giving speeches about it – not in the classroom, but outside the classroom – for anybody to attend and learn about the Constitution.
“And, I would not submit to any vetting or any committee looking into what I did. Again: do we really want the House Un-American Activities Committee to come to Harvard University and pass on who the students should be, who the faculty should be?”
“You know, these same students – hypocrites and bullies and McCarthyites – these same students claim they want diversity. They claim they want a more diverse student body. That’s the last thing they want.
“They don’t want more diversity. They want more of them. They want more people who think like them, who look like them, who act like them, who vote like them, who support candidates they do.
“The last thing they want is intellectual diversity. The last thing they want is somebody who worked on the Trump campaign. God forbid. It would be scary and frightening to have somebody who worked as a lawyer in the Trump Administration or as somebody who worked in some other capacity in the White House.”
“I welcome others to join me in this fight against bigotry, censorship, the end of due process and, ultimately, McCarthyism,” Dershowitz concluded.
