Alan Dershowitz: Fog of Fascism Descending on College Campuses
“It’s free speech for me, but not for thee.”
Esteemed Harvard law professor and author Alan Dershowitz addressed the controversy unfolding on college campuses like Yale and Mizzou in an appearance on the Kelly File Thursday night and called it what it is.
Zachary Leshin of CNS News provides a partial transcript:
Dershowitz: ‘The Fog of Fascism Is Descending Quickly Over Many American Universities’
“These are the same people who claim they are seeking diversity. The last thing many of these students want is real diversity, diversity of ideas. They may want superficial diversity, diversity of gender, diversity of color, but they don’t want diversity of ideas.”
“We are seeing a curtain of McCarthyism descend over many college campuses,” said Dershowitz. “I don’t want to make analogies to the 1930s, but we have to remember it was the college students who first started burning books during the Nazi regime. And these students are book burners. They don’t want to hear diverse views on college campuses.”
“When I went to speak at Johns Hopkins University there were protests,” he said. “It was said that because I won’t acknowledge that Israel commits crimes against the Palestinians, I am quote ‘harassing students’ and violating the ethical standards of Johns Hopkins University.”
“By expressing my opinion,” he continued, “I am ‘harassing students.’ This has become a very serious problem not only in American universities, but in universities around the world as well. And it is influencing and having a terrible impact on the education of students.”
“It is the worst kind of hypocrisy,” said Dershowitz. “They want complete freedom over their sex lives, over their personal lives, over the use of drugs, but they want mommy and daddy, dean, and president to please give them a safe place, to protect them from ideas that maybe are insensitive. Maybe we’ll make them think, but it’s a double standard.”
Watch the video below, via the Washington Free Beacon:
Hot Air blogger Ed Morrissey echoed that sentiment in a column for The Fiscal Times:
Yale, Mizzou and Others—Training a Generation of Proto-Fascists
To paraphrase an old Monty Python routine, come and see the violence inherent in campus progressivism. Academia no longer values an open and robust exchange of ideas, a pursuit of truth, and adherence to actual tolerance. Actual commitment to learning would have prompted scrutiny of extraordinary claims and discussion of differing points of view.
Instead, campuses have become overrun by proto-fascists who want submission to groupthink and are not afraid to call out for “some muscle” to enforce it. In most of these cases, the proto-fascists can find muscle in one form or another to shut down dissent and impose their narrow-minded demands for power.
University administrators either shrink from their responsibilities out of fear for their own positions, or have long before joined the cadre of petty martinets patrolling their ivy-covered walls to enforce the groupthink rather than enlighten young minds.
This issue should be addressed in the presidential election as part of a larger conversation on higher education reform. Why should college be “free” when it’s becoming increasingly clear that some students can’t handle opposing views?
Featured image via YouTube.
DONATE
Donations tax deductible
to the full extent allowed by law.
Comments
I only take exception to the use of the term “McCarthyism” by Da Dersh.
McCarthy…while a very flawed person…had it right. People like Trumbow WERE Communists and Stalinist.
What he should have said is “Collectivism”. Nazis and Stalinist were the right models. THEY were the book-burners and the ThoughtPolice.
People just unthinkingly accept that “Mccarthyism” is synonymous with demagoguery, “witch hunting” and authoritarian oppression, even a man like Dershowitz who should know better.
What Dershowitz fails to say is that there is a blacklist NOW in Hollywood, just as bad is it was against the communists in the 50’s, and Obama is leading the charge.
Hey Dershowitz: How many commie Hollywood types were ruined by the likes of Lois Lerner and Obama?
McCarthyism is right, even if it was somewhat weak. It communicates the idea.
Other examples are the early years of the French Revolution, which culminated in the Reign of Terror in 1793; the inability to defend Israel in the Arab, or most of the Moslem world; or the way white people in the American South after about 1835, and especially 1840, could no longer disagree about the merits and demerits of slavery, and, during the Great Secession Winter of 1860-1861, about the case for secession.
“McCarthyism” is “right” only in the way people erroneously use the word. It’s a misnomer that millions agree to. McCarthy had nothing to do with Hollywood blacklists or HUAC, or infringing on the rights of the American people. He was trying to ferret out traitors and Soviet moles in the State Department and military, of which there were plenty.
Let’s start by cutting off all federal funding for any school that restricts Constitutional rights. By the time you hit college, you’re expected to have adult rights and adult responsibilities. Those responsibilities include not using force to silence people with differing opinions.
Why is there federal funding for any school except for the service academies? Aren’t these state and private institutions?
I find it odd that Dershowitz is speaking up now. All of this totalitarian behavior has been practiced by the left for a long time. He is a liberal so he has supported it at least implicitly. Perhaps the harm is now hitting the University faculty lounge so Alan is speaking up because it was not supposed to get so close to home? Something is not making sense, Alan.
I disagree. He’s generally been a left-liberal, but he’s been fair-minded, and the general drift of “progressivism” is moving rapidly to the left of him, while he maintains his principles.
Agree: the likes of Dershowitz have created the psychos – and the Obamas – he now complains of.
It’s good to see you speaking up, Alan, but it may be too little, too late. Are you still voting democrat??
Mr. Dershowitz must have a really slow alarm clock. But, at least he is starting to wake up to the mess that he was a part of creating.
Eyes open, ah shoot!
Progressive liberalism is unprincipled and degenerative. Yesterday’s liberal or progressive is necessarily today’s conservative, for all but the residual generational fanatics and extremists.
Republicans need to speak up , there still is a silent majority out there that will cross over and vote to end this and black lives matters idiocy. Part of them were known as Reagan democrats, it’s time to speak out and get t their vote.
So who’s going to do that? = Pee Wee Prebus? Romney? Boehner? Ryan? McConnell?
We need to dump the corrupt jackasses hogging the GOP party leadership (or just dump the party and go Tea Party all the way.) Without doing so, we’re lost.
Republicans need to speak up , there still is a silent majority out there that will cross over and vote to end this and black lives matters idiocy. Part of them were known as Reagan democrats, it’s time to speak out and get their vote.
I love that one of the first things the whining ‘student savages’ demand is that the class and/or exam be cancelled.
State governments could easily throttle back the cash and offer public monies for education only to career bound students. For example, continue loans and grants to programs that prove 75% of students get jobs, cut off the rest. Make the department of gender rainbows an online only course and let the kiddies study from their parents basements. Honestly, we’re adults, we’re supposed to be smarter than these misguided children!