By Jonas E. Alexis -April 2, 2021
…by Jonas E. Alexis, VT Editor
Alan Dershowitz is just an academic fraud. It’s just that simple. All you have to do is pick up a copy of Norman Finkelstein’s Beyond Chutzpah: On the Misuse of Anti-Semitism and the Abuse of History. But if you think that Dershowitz is just a fraudster who has a habit of defending pedophiles and hanging out with sexual predators like Jeffrey Epstein,[1] then you ain’t seen nothing yet. “Even after Epstein’s first arrest in 2007, Dershowitz stood by his side. Not only did he keep the friendship going, he helped draft the non-prosecution agreement that got Epstein a lenient sentence!”
What has Dershowitz been up to lately? He has recently complained to Yale University about psychiatrist Bandy X. Lee, who suggested that Dershowitz is probably suffering from psychosis. From the New York Times:
“Days later, Mr. Dershowitz complained in an email to Yale, saying that Dr. Lee had violated ethics rules by offering a public diagnosis without examining him. Shortly after, Dr. Lee says, the head of Yale’s psychiatry department warned her about her behavior. Dr. Lee eventually lost her position at the school.”[2]
What was one of Dershowitz’s complaints? “The idea that you can diagnose me, without ever having even met me, is unprofessional, irresponsible and unacademic,” he declared. Well, Dershowitz diagnosed the political ideas of people and passed radical judgements on them all the time! He called Finkelstein “an evil man” with “two Jewish parents.” Finkelstein’s parents died in Nazi Germany, and what was Dershowitz’s response?
“[Finkelstein] suspects his mother of having been a kapo (‘really, how else would she have survived?’ he asks rhetorically)… He suspects his own mother of being a kapo and cooperating with the Nazis during the Holocaust.”
If that isn’t wicked enough, this is Dershowitz at his best—and this is from his own book, The Case for Peace:
“Finkelstein even doubted his own mother’s denial that she was a kapo, asking whether her frequent statements that nazi“the best didn’t survive” constituted “an indirect admission of guilt?” The most he was willing to do was “assume” that his mother answered him “truthfully.” But he questioned even that assumption: “Still, if she didn’t cross fundamental moral boundaries, I glimpsed from her manner of pushing and shoving in order to get to the head of a queue, which mortified me. . . . Really, how else would she have survived?”
Now how can Dershowitz be complaining about being labeled psychotic when he is accusing people of anti-Semitism, of collaborating with Nazis, and of being completely evil and wicked? Isn’t this man a lawyer? Shouldn’t he know common decencies and principles such as do unto others as you would have done unto you? And what the heck is this man saying in books such as Cancel Culture: The Latest Attack on Free Speech and Due Process? Did Finkelstein have the freedom to say what he wanted when he was being examined for a tenure position at DePaul University? Isn’t Brandy X Lee being let go for even having an opinion about Dershowitz?
Jeffrey Lieberman, a Columbia University professor who chairs the psychiatry department, declared that Lee’s opinion “problematic for the profession, because it means the profession is using terms too loosely and too glibly.”[3] Then why is Dershowitz getting off the hook, Lieberman? Why is he passing off radical judgement on someone’ mother who happened to be a survivor from Nazi Germany? Isn’t that problematic? If so, why aren’t you calling Dershowitz on it? Brandy X Lee has every right to sue the university.[4]
- [1] For a recent development, see Kate Briquelet, William Bredderman, “Alan Dershowitz Has Close Ties to Firm Behind Explosive New Epstein Lawsuit,” Daily Beast, April 1, 2021; Joe Sommerlad, “Ghislaine Maxwell timeline: The life of the Jeffrey Epstein associate accused of sex trafficking,” Independent, March 30, 2021.
- [2] Mihir Zaveri, “A Yale Psychiatrist’s Tweet About Dershowitz, Her Dismissal, and a Lawsuit,” NY Times, March 26, 2021.
- [3] Ibid.
- [4] Matthew Wright, “Yale psychiatry professor sues the university for firing her after she tweeted that Trump supporters suffered ‘shared psychosis’ and Alan Dershowitz had ‘taken on Trump’s symptoms by contagion,’” Daily Mail, March 24, 2021.
BIOGRAPHYJ
Jonas E. Alexis has degrees in mathematics and philosophy. He studied education at the graduate level. His main interests include U.S. foreign policy, history of Israel/Palestine conflict, and the history of ideas. He is the author of the new book Zionism vs. the West: How Talmudic Ideology is Undermining Western Culture. He is currently working on a book tentatively titled, Kevin MacDonald’s Abject Failure: A Philosophical and Moral Critique of Evolutionary Psychology, Sociobiology, and White Identity. He teaches mathematics in South Korea.
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