"Would these same people be coming out saying academic freedom you're violating our academic freedom, we have the right to teach white supremacy, we have the free speech right to harass black students? No. It's all hypocrisy. It's all about whose side you're on... If you're going to be a neutral university, you have to take the same position in protecting Jews as you would in protecting blacks.... There isn't a university in the country that would allow Ku Klux Klan — masked people wearing hoods — to come in and harass black students, and many universities do allow Hamas supporters wearing masks to come in and harass Jewish students.... People always ask me 'What's your definition of anti-semitism?' It's so simple: double standard...."
April 16, 2025
"Would [Harvard] recognize the Ku Klux Klan? For me, the National Lawyers Guild and the Ku Klux Klan are indistinguishable in terms of ideology...."
"If [Harvard] wouldn't recognize Klansmen or if it wouldn't recognize a group of sexists who called for the end of equality for women, then it shouldn't recognize the pro-Hamas National Lawyers Guild.... If this were the 1950s and there was a university say the University of Mississippi — Old Miss — that was forcibly integrated and it was allowing... some of the Klansmen who were students to harass black students, and the federal government came in and said 'Unless you stop Klansmen from harassing black students we're going to cut off federal funding,' people would be applauding that.'..."
Posts
57 comments:
In America you should be free to speak out against the Crips *and* the Bloods. Just because the Crips run a drive by does not mean its okay for the Bloods to burn down an apartment complex. Is that antisemitic to say?
The last time the National Lawyers' Guild came up you got that pre-prepared "Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last?" routine. I'm not going to get into the rights and wrongs of McCarthy or Dershowitz, but it could be that both of them overreached a bit.
Bah. The left doesn't do turnabout. It's all who/whom.
Its nice if Dersh didn't like the National Lawyers Guild because they're American hating communists as opposed to not fighting anti-semitism hard enough. But at least he dislikes them.
I find his language rather hysterical. Pro-Hamas = KKK. But I'm the only one who thinks so.
"I don't know what they have to say
It makes no difference anyway
Whatever it is, I'm against it
No matter what it is or who commenced it
I'm against it
Your proposition may be good
But let's have one thing understood:
Whatever it is, I'm against it
And even when you've changed it or condensed it
I'm against it..."
So far the Trump Administration has been pretty expertly playing the Democrat's advocacy programming against itself, and the polls reflect the effectiveness of the tactic.
Intimidation is illegal, antisemitism is not.
Harvard is ridiculous. It needs a good beat down. These jerks routinely reject students with perfect SAT and ACT scores and great grades but offer remedial math classes to the morons that get in. And what about the nonsense that 20% of Harvard students are Native American? And Claudine Gay?!
In an ideal world, private universities could admit whomever they wanted for whatever reason. But there was a serpent in Eden--the taxpayers give them all that money ("grants"). They have to adhere to the civil rights laws. They have to follow federal policy if they want that money. Harvard=Bob Jones University.
These types of arguments are intellectually lazy and therefore very effective. I think in the case of Palestinians, they believe they are the African-American character in this analogy and Israel is the KKK. And as a matter of fact that is exactly what the Palestinian supporters are saying.
The fact remains these comparisons are not relevant they are merely effective tricks used to sway public opinion and only serve to perpetuate the conflict.
The standard is $$$. Harvard loves that Middle East $$$ as much as it loves the China $$. Cut off their government funding and deny their student visas.
I think people forget that Palestinians are semites too
Howard wrote: The fact remains these comparisons are not relevant they are merely effective tricks used to sway public opinion and only serve to perpetuate the conflict.
Yup.
What Dershowitz is doing is brilliant - subtly undermining the case against Harvard with a really bad analogy while maintaining his viability within the MAGA world.
Dershowitz is a very skilled builder of arguments. His approach works beautifully on, for example, students or those who are not quite familiar with details. He had sessions in which he would bring students over to his side. Very impressive. Combined with that movie about him... he was my favorite named lawyer early on.
On some occasions, however, he hit the wall, completely collapsing when someone would come well prepared with data -- like in that old debate with Finkelstein on Democracy Now, after which he (Dershowitz) was never looked upon the same by many of us who heard it at the time. This was before Finkelstein turned bitter in his tone (no wonder considering...), and he was still a young scholar with no revenge as motivation, just handling the numbers not fitting the preferred narrative.
Essentially, even someone who is still aligned with D.'s basic direction had to come out thinking that he is just another "I am ready to lose my soul for my people over not-to-important issues" person. With Finkelstein being his idealistic opposite. All fine, they made their choices.
Re: Harvard, it is quite simple: Harvard happily not-even-pretended-to-resist to accommodate ideologically aligned administrations. They deserve everything that is coming to them.
Dershowitz had no need to do weak (too-smart-for-his-own-good) analogies, which opens him to equally weak "who is more similar to KKK, let us ask South Africans or descendants of former slaves in the US" complications.
Left Bank makes a good point. Perhaps this is one reason why the Epstein files have not been released.
mccullough: "Harvard loves that Middle East $$$"
Yes, would be great to force the sheikhs to give even more money, and have Harvard turn into giant muzzie Hillsdale (Jebel-dale?). Minarets looming over Tercentenary Theatre. A modesty code and alcohol ban. The Lampoon turned into a monthly collection of Jewish caricatures. Ask-An-Imam columns in the Crimson. The stock of the Puritans truly dead.
Just beautiful.
JSM
Dersh is absolutely right.
Trump should push this issue until Harvard concedes.
Imagine being a real scientist at Harvard who does real research and have her federal grant money cut off because Harvard won't protect Jewish students.
And who is the new clown running Harvard now? Did he plagiarize too?
Intimidation is illegal
Harvard loses. DEI (i.e. institutional, systemic racism, sexism, etc) loses. Progressive principles take a step backward. #HateLovesAbortion
Equating the pro-Palestine National Lawyers Guild with the 1950s KKK might seem a stretch, but considering the motivation of the pro-Palestine guy who just tried to incinerate the (Jewish) PA Governor, maybe not.
"Imagine being a real scientist at Harvard who does real research and have her federal grant money cut off because Harvard won't protect Jewish students."
Too woke, as a matter of style. "His" covers both genders still.
yes the nlg was the one that joseph welch's office hired, that prompted that manufactured outrage against McCarthy,
they were the Stalinist lawyers,
Garber, he pushed the vaccine mandate on students,
I really applaud this entire discussion. The basis is whether the federal government should be funding AND providing tax exempt status to one of the most prestigious and wealthy universities in the world.
The preface of that discussion is slightly less relevant than that underlying premise.
there was nothing to that story, virginia giuffre nee roberts is a bad liar,
First Hamas supporters violate laws and others' rights. Then they demand the protection of laws and insist on their rights above and beyond any rational person's view of reality. It is a trick they play, demanding others accept their viewpoint and behavior as "respect," or violence ensues.
It is a variation of the clown nose off then clown nose on acts by leftist comedians whose vileness is all just a joke, but only after they are called out on their vileness.
Don't play their game. Suttee in India stopped when Napier said he would of course respect local tradition and let widows be tossed alive onto their dead husband's funeral pyres. But he also demanded mutual cultural respect, and said that British culture demanded that murder be punished, and a gibbet would be erected next to every pyre to hang those practicing suttee.
Pro-Palestinians scream for genocide then scream they are being disrespected when called out on it. To hell with that, to hell with them, they need to respect our culture or feel its full weight to convince them their genocidal behavior is not going to continue.
https://freebeacon.com/campus/harvard-law-publishes-fond-reminiscence-from-student-facing-criminal-charges-for-assaulting-jewish-classmate/ tell us where your sympathies lie
Isn't this argument begging the question? Universities in the 1920s did have KKK groups.
Even now, they might have to allow such a group based on first amendment principals as long as that group obeyed the rules. I actually think most Universities really would be forced to allow such a group, though they would obviously not be happy about it.
It's not a crime to be a member of the KKK. It's shameful, of course, but not criminal. It is, in fact, famously used as an example of supporting freedom of speech to allow that.
there was a harvard grad who became an american nazi, ironically he was part african american
Spot on.
https://www.bostonmagazine.com/2006/05/15/the-harvard-nazi/ in winds of war, he was played by randy quaid of all people
Alan's ox has been gored.
The NLG are Gramscian Marxists and have been for decades. Like all of them, including progressive Democrats, their aim is to destabilize the nation. Their support for any other cause is meaningless. In the final battle for control between the Islamists and the Marxists, the Islamists will eat them up.
And intimidation is not illegal when Alan does it;
"Dershowitz took a number of steps to stop publication of Beyond Chutzpah. His lawyers wrote letters to the University of California Press threatening a lawsuit if it published the book. Dershowitz also wrote to the Governor of California, Arnold Schwarzenegger, asking him to stop the book from being published. Schwarzenegger responded that "he is not inclined to otherwise exert influence in this case because of the clear, academic freedom issue it presents". According to Jon Weiner, writing in The Nation, Dershowitz' lawyers contacted the president of the University of California, the university provost, seventeen directors of the university press and nineteen members of the university press’s faculty editorial committee to attempt to stop the publication of the book."
I find his language rathe hysterical. Pro-Hamas = KKK.
Hamas does not speak for all Palestinians, nor does it govern in their interests. So yes, being pro-Hamas can equate with bein in the KKK, because Hamas is a military/advocacy organization who holds as a central tenent that a particular set of people, identified by their race and religion, should be killed or expelled from their land
I had never heard of Norman Finkelstein until Mica mentioned him above. I looked up the Democracy Now debate; I found it to be almost unlistenable. I didn't see where Finkelstein dismantled Dershowitz - almost everything Finkelstein says is about the technical details of the Dershowitz book, plagiarism, etc., which I agree is bad news if true, but he doesn't much address the substance of Dershowitz's argument, in which he favors a two state solution. (As far as I know, Dershowitz still supports this fantasy.)
Finkelstein gets a whole chapter in "Unity and Diversity in Contemporary Antisemitism," a 2019 collection of essays.
Alan Johnson, the author of the essay, says that "the new antisemitism, which might also be called antisemitic anti-Zionism, has three components: a political programme to abolish the Jewish homeland, a discourse to demonise it, and a movement to make it a global pariah state."
Finkelstein seems to have done everything he can to promote this viewpoint. Himself the child of Holocaust survivors, he accuses Jews in general and Israel in particular of playing the "Holocaust card" to ward off criticism.
Johnson debated him in 2015: "Finkelstein put on a political stand-up routine when I debated him in London about the new antisemitism...To a few hundred students he told a rolling ‘gag’ about the 2014-2015 YouGov poll of antisemitic attitudes in the United Kingdom. His ‘punch line’ was that agreement to statements about Jews can’t be an indicator of antisemitism if those statement are… true."
I wouldn't cite Finkelstein as a source on anything. But that's just me.
Hamas Fatah Popular Front, they were all part of October 7th
the first two were part of the unity govt in the West Bank
Completely agree except that Trump is asking for far more than that, well beyond what is reasonable.
1937 NLG founded as alternative to ABA. 2025 DOJ prohibits its lawyers from having anything to do with ABA.
Completely agree except that Trump is asking for far more than that, well beyond what is reasonable.
I read his entire letter to Harvard, and some was vague ("hire without viewpoint discrimination" "evenly enforce current campus regulations regarding student misconduct") but I saw nothing "well beyond reasonable."
What exactly does that refer to?
Here is the letter in its entirety and it was not sent by Trump:
https://www.harvard.edu/research-funding/wp-content/uploads/sites/16/2025/04/Letter-Sent-to-Harvard-2025-04-11.pdf
Again, nothing even approaching unreasonable it it. If you disagree please cite the passage(s).
Hot link to letter for the daring.
I'm not fond of Dersh, but it's a fine analogy. Their first graduation speaker could be The Black Klansman, who is a real person and has a press agency representing him for such gigs.
Press Harvard to reinstate a core curriculum centered on the history of Western civilization or, perhaps even better, a comparative history of world civilizations with the emphasis on the emergence of those liberal ideals and institutions that distinguish the West. That would go a long way towards reestablishing what in my opinion ought to be one of Harvard's core missions, namely to transmit to the next generation of America's elite an appreciation of what is most valuable about our culture and civilization.
The essential fact to remember is that a culture--any culture--that is not transmitted from one generation to the next will quickly disappear.
Hot link to letter for the daring.
Why is following a hot-link supposedly daring?
I find his language rather hysterical. Pro-Hamas = KKK. But I'm the only one who thinks so.
Probably because Hamas hasn't explicitly called for you and your co-religionists to be exterminated, and acted on it.
"Even now, they might have to allow such a group based on first amendment principals as long as that group obeyed the rules."
The Devil is in the details.
Why is following a hot-link supposedly daring?
You must be new around here. *Some people* would provide links way off topic that are...hard to forget seeing.
[Ole] Miss.
Mike (MJB Wolf), the part I thought was unreasonable was
“Every department or field found to lack viewpoint diversity must be reformed by hiring a critical mass of new faculty within that department or field who will provide viewpoint diversity; every teaching unit found to lack viewpoint diversity must be reformed by admitting a critical mass of students who will provide viewpoint diversity.”
Looks like this is supposed to happen simply by abolishing existing ideological litmus tests, but I don’t believe that’s possible. First, the state of education in this country is such that Harvard barely needs to pay attention to get candidates who already agree with them on everything. You would have to institute an opposite test, and hire and admit primarily based on that for several years. Think what kind of nonsense this could lead to in the hard sciences. Two wrongs don’t equal a merit hire.
Agreed, Anniella. That's the kind of vague top-down change that would be impossible to audit. Recruiting a wider base for teaching staff would be good though.
RCOCEAN II
"I find his language rather hysterical. Pro-Hamas = KKK."
Seriously, you think this equation is hysterical? I'd say it was temperate. Of course, the KKK never measured up to what Hamas pulled on Oct. 7, 2023. I suppose being "pro" Hamas is not quite as evil as being Hamas (though some of them are both), but still, it is surely at least as evil as being pro-KKK. Masks, Keffiyehs, Hoods with slits for eyes. Go Dersh. Take no prisoners.
Many big money students come from oil exporting nations. Think of the potential donations. Think of the endowment 30 or 50 years into the future. Beholden to alumni.
Mrs. X: " I didn't see where Finkelstein dismantled Dershowitz - almost everything Finkelstein says is about the technical details of the Dershowitz book, ..."
But that is exactly where the whole D.s argument was collapsing (and not only his, unfortunately, but the whole broader attempt to reshape the argument over land -- this is what happens when you play with the numbers, and encounter someone who is more skilled than you are).
It is interesting to learn after all these years that someone is associating Finkelstein's early work with any kind of antisemitism, no less than as in a chapter in a book! I guess as less and less people remember the affair as it was happening, and its initial, purely academic nature, this type of labeling will be more and more successful.
Now, regarding who was dismantled in that early debate... attempts to systematically reinterpret Murray's disastrous attempts to execute (legitimate) "clown-nose-on/clown-nose-off" arguments, are an excellent example of how someone can win from the historical perspective!
narciso said...
there was a harvard grad who became an american nazi, ironically he was part african american
Lawrence Dennis. He was a self-professed fascist. He was pro-Nazi, too, but not a Nazi. In his day, he might have been called a "fellow traveler." Today it might be "Nazi-adjacent." Not even his wife knew of his Black ancestry.
“Why is following a hot-link supposedly daring?”
You must be new around here. *Some people* would provide links way off topic that are...hard to forget seeing.
I've been on this list for 20 years. Beyond that, one can always check where a link—even a hot-link—is going before following it. I recommend it.
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