Dershowitz: Harvard Paper Won't Print Letter on Claudine Gay

Harvard University Law School professor emeritus Alan Dershowitz on Friday wrote in an opinion piece for The New York Post that the Harvard Crimson refused to publish a letter he wrote criticizing President Claudine Gay's congressional testimony.

Dershowitz noted that he wrote a letter criticizing Gay's testimony and an article in the Crimson written by law professor Charles Fried that offered "a legalistic defense" of her statement that "context matters" when talking about free speech and hate speech.

"Yes, context matters, and in this broader context, Gay was wrong to brag to Congress about Harvard's commitment to free expression without also telling it that Harvard's selective application of free-speech standards earned it a last-place rating for free speech by the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression," Dershowitz wrote.

"It is in that context that Gay's new and selective double standard for protecting the free speech of Jew-haters should be evaluated," he added.

"It is to be hoped that Gay's new contextual standard will in the future be universally applied to all speech at Harvard and the DEI bureaucracy will henceforth be denied the power to censor and cancel expression that is directed against protected minorities," he added, referring to diversity, equity, and inclusion.

The longtime Harvard professor noted that "this is the first time in my 65 years of writing letters to the editor that one has been turned down."

He added, "It's a telling irony the paper that reassured its readers 'Free speech is the guiding principle of this Editorial Board' refuses to publish a letter calling for less censorship and viewpoint discrimination on campus."

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