Harvard Law prof.: 'when I speak...in favor of Israel I need armed guards'

Harvard Law professor Alan Dershowitz took another shot at campus safe-spaces on Tuesday during an appearance on “Fox and Friends,” saying campuses “became places where people are afraid of ideas.”

Host Brian Kilmeade began the interview by referencing a recent survey put out by McLaughlin and Associates, which shows a majority of college students support speech codes on campus. More than half of the students who were surveyed agreed with limiting free speech in classrooms and 63 percent said they would prefer the use of trigger warnings in lectures.

“What happened to our college campuses, professor?” Kilmeade asked.

“They became places where people are afraid of ideas. They think they know the truth, and they don’t want to hear opposing points of view. They know everything they need to know about race, about gender, about rape, about climate control,” Dershowitz replied.

“Opposing points of view just offend them. They want to be safe from ideas they may disagree with. If they want to be safe from ideas, there are better places to be than college and university campuses,” he added.

Dershowitz went on to explain how he rarely feels safe on campuses when discussing his pro-Israel views.

“Christian speakers, pro-Israel speakers, speakers that are not politically correct today have their physical safety endangered. I know when I speak on college campuses in favor of Israel I need armed guards protecting me from radical leftist students who will use physical intimidation. They won’t give me a safe space,” he said.

In one instance, Dershowitz said he was greeted with shouts of “Zionists out of CUNY!” when giving a lecture at the City College of New York. At Johns Hopkins University, students allegedly protested his lecture with posters of Dershowitz sporting a Hitler mustache. As a result, Dershowitz needs police officers to escort him around campus for his own safety.

Over the past several months, Dershowitz has been highly vocal about his frustrations with college students, even comparing some of them to “book burners” under the Nazi regime.

“I don’t want to make analogies to the 1930s, but we have to remember that it was the students at universities who first started burning books during the Nazi regime, and these students are book burners,” Dershowitz said in a Nov. 13 interview.

Earlier this month, Dershowitz went on New York’s AM 970 “The Cat’s Roundtable” to discuss safe-spaces with host John Catsimatidis.

“They want a safe space for their ideas, well fine, don’t go to college; don’t go to universities,” he said. “Universities are not going to give you a safe space for your ideas. Your ideas are going to be challenged.”

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