Dershowitz Critiques Report, Calls CU Profs "Extremists"

Echoing comments he made at a speech on Columbia’s campus two months ago, Alan Dershowitz, a noted Harvard law professor, sharply criticized Columbia’s Middle East and Asian Languages and Cultures department and called for a stronger defense of students’ rights last Friday.

Responding to the recently convened ad hoc grievance committee’s report, released on March 31, 2005, Dershowitz said that Columbia’s campus is pervaded by a climate of intolerance and extremism.

“The situation in regards to the Middle East on the Harvard campus is infinitely better than it is on the Columbia campus,” Dershowitz said. “There is more discussion; there is more dialogue. And there’s a reason for that. The reason is that our faculty is not loaded with extremists.”

Dershowitz also said he wishes more Columbia faculty members would support students who bring complaints about abuse, discrimination, and bias in MEALAC.

“I hope that more professors will speak out on behalf of student rights so that in the future, professors from outside won’t have to come down,” he said.

At a Feb. 7 speech in Lerner Cinema, Dershowitz told students they should not accept the ad hoc committee’s findings if the findings are “affected by the ideological makeup” of the committee.

Now that the report has been released, Dershowitz again criticized the committee’s composition, but said Columbia students should take the report seriously. Ideally, he said, the raw material that went into the report would be released to the public.

“The most distressing thing I found in the report was the implication that it would be wrong for one professor to try to find out what another professor was doing in class,” he added. “Classes are not private places. Classrooms are open and public, and it’s perfectly okay for professors to be interested in what other professors are teaching. So I think the report was much too solicitous in professors’ rights and not solicitous enough in the rights of students.”

Dershowitz is the Felix Frankfurter Professor of Law at Harvard. He is a civil libertarian often known for his role in O.J. Simpson’s murder defense team.