Alan Dershowitz To Retire From Harvard Law School
Image by wikicommons
Alan Dershowitz, one of the country’s most prominent lawyers and a passionate, sometimes controversial, advocate for Israel, is retiring from Harvard Law School.
The 75-year-old lawyer, who is known for taking on high profile and often unpopular causes and clients, has taught at Harvard Law for half a century. His retirement is official at the end of the week.
Image by wikicommons
In 1967, he became the youngest full professor in the school’s history. An expert in criminal and constitutional law, Dershowitz has served on the defense team of celebrities including O.J. Simpson and Claus von Bulow and, more recently, Wikileaks founder Julian Assange.
Dershowitz, speaking from a conference in Israel, said last week according to the Boston Globe: “Yeah, I’m really retiring. …My retirement consists of reducing my schedule down to only about 10 things at any given time.”
Dershowitz, a Brooklyn native who has written and spoken often on his Orthodox Jewish upbringing and education, has used his prominence to defend Israel over the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Among his harshest critics is Noam Chomsky, the renowned Massachusetts Institute of Technology linguist with whom he has had a long-running public feud over Israel.
In 2006, Dershowitz publicly challenged former U.S. President Jimmy Carter, for the views he expressed in his book “Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid,” calling the book biased.
While “proud to be Jewish and engaged with Israel’s future,” Dershowitz also assisted Palestinian students when they sought inclusion of the Palestinian flag in a campus display, Harvard Law School dean Martha Minow told JTA.
Minow described Dershowitz as a devoted teacher of 50 years. “We look forward to his continuing vibrancy, wit, and wisdom,” she said in an email to JTA.
A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.
We’ve set a goal to raise $260,000 by December 31. That’s an ambitious goal, but one that will give us the resources we need to invest in the high quality news, opinion, analysis and cultural coverage that isn’t available anywhere else.
If you feel inspired to make an impact, now is the time to give something back. Join us as a member at your most generous level.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
