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-FascistsTo 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.
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