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Alan Dershowitz Threatens to Sue UC Berkeley for Blocking Free Speech

September 28, 2017

Harvard Law School professor emeritus Alan Dershowitz said Thursday that he would sue the University of California, Berkeley if the school does not change its guidelines for campus speakers, noting that Berkeley makes it more difficult for pro-Israel speakers to come to campus than anti-Israel ones.

Dershowitz, a lifelong Democrat, appeared on Fox News' "Fox and Friends," where he explained how Berkeley rules allow anti-Israel speakers to express their views on campus more easily than pro-Israel speakers.

"Berkely has said I can't speak there because I'm a 'high visibility person,' and if you are high visibility you have to give eight weeks notice unless you are invited by a department," Dershowitz said. "Now, here's the trick: departments invite anti-Israel speakers all the time, so they don't have to go through the eight-week thing. But they don't invite pro-Israel speakers, so we have the eight-week barrier, whereas anti-Israel speakers don't have the eight-week barrier."

Dershowitz then said that he would sue Berkeley if the school does not allow him to speak, noting that anti-Israel speakers could come to the university and speak in three or four days if a department invites them.

"I'm going to sue Berkeley if they don't allow me to speak," Dershowitz said. "If they make me wait eight weeks and allow anti-Israel speakers to come within three or four days, that's a lawsuit."

He also explained that Berkeley is a public university and therefore is bound by the First Amendment.

"Berkeley is a public university, taxpayers' money. They are bound by the First Amendment, so they can't impose one rule on pro-Israel speakers and one rule on anti-Israel speakers, [or] one rule on conservatives [and] one rule on liberals," he said.

"The student are reacting because they're telling me that they're being denied the opportunity to listen to speakers that they want to hear," Dershowitz added.

Earlier in his interview, Dershowitz said that most college campus protests today have nothing to do with the substance of the speeches but are meant to shut down speakers with whom the students disagree. He reflected on his Wednesday night speech at Columbia University, where he invited members of the Students for the Justice of Palestine to ask him all the "hard questions" they wanted, promising to stay at the event as long as they wanted.

"They chickened out last night. What happened is they protested outside, they came inside, but they just put little leaflets on the seats, and then they left," Dershowitz said. "They wouldn't even listen to me. I invited them back. I said you can ask me the hardest questions. I'll stay as long as you want. I'll answer every hard question, in fact only hard questions. You get to go first, you get to say whatever you want, but they wouldn't engage me."

"I’m not going to let Berkeley get away with that," he added. "They're a pubic university. They're going to have to comply with the First Amendment. We are going to win this."