האיש שהתחזית שלו התגשמה: פרופ' דרשוביץ שחזה את השתלטות השמאל הקיצוני על הקמפוסים בארה"ב

As the legal and political clash between President Trump and Harvard continues to escalate, one of the university's most prominent former professors is weighing in. Criminal attorney Alan Dershowitz is famed for defending OJ Simpson, Mike Tyson, and Donald Trump. At 28, he became Harvard's youngest tenured law professor and taught for over 50 years. On Bay Area Innovators, he discusses why he predicted Harvard's current issues decades ago and how he navigates the moral challenges of representing controversial figures. Let's hear his insights. I wanna ask you about Harvard. Obviously, there's been some friction there. What are your thoughts? What's happening with Harvard and how is this gonna end up, you think? In 1991, I wrote a book called Chutzpah, in which I predicted we would see increasing antisemitism on college campuses. And we would see college students and faculty moving way, way, way far to the left. And that prediction has come true. And so university campuses have become hotbeds of bigotry, anti-Americanism, anti-Christianity, anti-Judaism, and schools have been too tolerant and too permissive. Now, teachers have academic freedom outside the classroom. They do not have academic freedom inside the classroom. When I taught at Harvard for 50 years, I had 10,000 students. Never once did I express a political or personal view inside the classroom. If you wanna know what my views are, read my op-eds or come and hear me make a speech. But the classroom is sacred. Classroom sacredness has been abused largely by the left, which have used the podium that they've been given in order to propagandize students and teach them to be anti-American and anti-Semitic. And we've seen the spread. And if the universities can't deal with that, then the federal government has to come and do something about it. For me, the analogy is to 1955, when I was a college student, and schools in the South were allowing the Ku Klux Klan to come on campus and to wear masks and to terrorize black students. And they were allowing white teachers to teach white supremacy in the classroom. And all of us liberals would have been happy to have the federal government come in and impose restrictions on that kind of misuse of academic freedom. And I think the same rule should apply. You can't have one rule for bias and bigotry against blacks and a different rule for bias and bigotry against Jews. I have to ask you this. You're a criminal lawyer, again, probably the most renowned in the world. How do you balance your inside moral values with a case? Because you may deal with someone who is innocent, someone who did not commit a big crime, but someone who may have committed a big crime. And then you have to defend them the same. It's the hardest moral and emotional question. I've represented probably, I don't know, 300 people charged with crimes ranging from murder to you name it. And I think of myself like a doctor in the emergency ward. Both of my grandchildren are doctors. And when they get a patient wheeled into the ward, they don't ask, are you guilty or innocent? They just ask, are you sick or you're not sick? You treat the guilty as well as the innocent. I'm a criminal lawyer. And for the criminal justice system to work, you have to defend the guilty along with the innocent. That starts in the Bible with Abraham defending the sinners of Saddam. It continues to the pre-revolutionary era in the United States when John Adams defended those who were certainly guilty of being part of the Boston Massacre. And any lawyer who tells you that he only represents the innocent is not telling you the truth. Well, now I would never ever say that a person who I knew was guilty was innocent. That's not the argument I would make. I would argue about the evidence. I would say there wasn't proof beyond a reasonable doubt. I would say the evidence was improperly admitted, that it was tampered with, as it was, for example, in the OJ Simpson case. For example, I never stated publicly, never stated publicly, OJ Simpson is categorically innocent. I never said that. I don't say that about my clients, whether I believe they're innocent or guilty. I defend them as they should be defended based on the lack of evidence, based on constitutional violations. And so do I feel good when I get somebody off who I know was guilty? No, I have a policy. People usually have victory parties after they've won cases. I never go to a victory party because I know there's somebody dead or there's somebody hurt and that person doesn't deserve to have a celebration for the person who might've done it. So although I might feel professionally accomplished by winning a case of somebody who I believe is guilty, I don't feel great personal satisfaction, but it's much worse when I represent somebody who's innocent and who's convicted. And I've had that. Mike Tyson was innocent and he was convicted. I felt terrible that I couldn't win the case. I didn't do the trial. I just did the appeal on behalf of somebody who I knew was innocent and who was found guilty. And I've had that in a number of other cases. Mostly I've won those cases, but occasionally when you lose a case involving somebody who you think is innocent, that's the worst feeling. You can watch that full interview on epochtv.com by clicking the talk shows tab to find Bay Area innovators.