Harvard Can’t Use Academic Freedom as ‘Justification’ for Anti-Semitism and Anti-Americanism, Says Dershowitz: ‘Three Cheers’ For Trump

Fox News host Mark Levin and Harvard professor emeritus Alan Dershowitz laid into the university on Sunday night for “anti-Americanism, anti-Semitism, anti-Zionism,” and praised President Donald Trump for taking actions against the school.

Dershowitz appeared on Sunday’s Life, Liberty, and Levin on Fox News to discuss the school and the efforts by the Trump administration against it and other universities following the massive protests against Israel on many of the campuses that resulted in major clashes, but which also in some cases even had the support or participation of staff.

Harvard last week filed a lawsuit against the administration over the funding freeze, claiming the government is trying to “micromanage” their institutions and saying that important research is put at risk by the freeze.

Dershowitz called B.S. on the claims that the university is merely exercising their academic freedom.

Just remember the 1950s in southern schools when presidents of universities were saying, ‘all we want to do is teach white supremacy to our students, all we wanna do is have Ku Klux Klan people coming in with masks and harassing Black students. That’s part of our academic freedom.’

No, no, no! Harvard cannot use academic freedom as an excuse and a justification for teaching anti-Americanism, anti-Semitism, anti-Zionism. It’s a structural problem, it goes deep. The DEI, the diversity, equity and inclusion is anti-Semitic to its core. Intersectionality, Black theory, racial theory, queer theory, they’re all part of this attempt to try to promote a worldview that is essentially anti-American, anti-Semitic. The universities are not doing enough about it, and so the federal government has to step in the way they did in the 1950s when they have to step in to prevent segregation and discrimination against Black people.

Dershowitz said the university does have important research, and that the federal government has a role to play in ensuring that funding from taxpayers is going to that research and not to “illegitimate purposes,” adding that Harvard has “many of those.”

Both Dershowitz and Levin extensively praised Trump’s efforts against anti-Semitism at large, not just at the universities.

LEVIN: I just want to emphasize to the audience here, it’s Donald Trump who believes in free speech and academic freedom. That’s why he’s taking these people on. And it’s Donald Trump who’s trying to protect the Jewish students, not Harvard. And it’s Donald Trump that has an all-of-government, hands-on movement to fight anti-Semitism in this country, and he deserves an enormous amount of credit. And Alan, that includes these left-wing Jewish groups who are now attacking Donald Trump. And really giving all kinds of aid and comfort to the anti-Semites out there, don’t you think?

DERSHOWITZ: I agree completely. Chuck Schumer the other day said they’re using anti-Semitism as an excuse for the Republicans to be, you know, attacked. No! Donald Trump, I know him, cares deeply about anti-Semitism, cares deeply about the American public, and I think he ought to be praised for his efforts in trying to prevent universities from being turned into propaganda mills against American values and against America’s allies. So three cheers for what he’s doing and make sure he does it right so that research is not cut off from legitimate purposes, but it is cut off for illegitimate purposes. And Harvard has many of those.

Watch the clip above via Fox News.