Harvard student newspaper refuses to publish alum Alan Dershowitz's critique of Claudine Gay's congressional testimony

Harvard University's student newspaper, the Crimson, has refused to publish an op-ed penned by Alan Dershowitz that was critical of President Claudine Gay's congressional testimony regarding antisemitism on campus.

Dershowitz wrote his op-ed in response to a piece published by the Crimson on December 12 in which Professor Charles Fried defended Gay's claim that "context matters" when it comes to punishing those who call for genocide against Jews.
 

"I think this is the first time in my 65 years of writing letters to the editor that one has been turned down," Dershowitz wrote in piece for the New York Post on Thursday, "and this one is from a professor who has been on the Harvard faculty for 60 years and has published numerous articles and letters in the Crimson."

He noted that it was "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," suggesting the paper's refusal "reflects Harvard's double-standard approach to free speech: contextual free speech for the enemies of Jews and their state; censorship for supporters of Israel and critics of Harvard."

In his rejected op-ed, Dershowitz argued that the problem with Fried's defense of Gay is that "he fails to acknowledge that for Gay, context apparently matters only for genocidal threats against Jews."

Fried, he wrote, "fails to see the broader context of the double standard employed by so many universities — including Harvard — against Jews and other minorities that are excluded by DEI."

"It is to be hoped," Dershowitz conclued, "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."

In the Post, Dershowitz slammed Harvard for sitting idly by as the university becomes less safe for Jewish students, citing numerous examples showing how the Crimson has "become the megaphone for anti-Israel and antisemitic extremism on campus."