Alan Dershowitz—Is He ‘Insane’, or Just ‘Out of His Mind’?

Dershowitzism is the New McCarthyism

In 2017, I and a group of psychiatrists collectively believed we had an urgent professional as well as civic responsibility to warn America that Donald Trump showed signs of extreme psychological dangers, which would become uncontainable without timely intervention.  This led to a conference and a public-service book that became an instant New York Times bestseller, The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump: 27 Psychiatrists and Mental Health Experts Assess a President.

A couple years later, when the notorious Alan Dershowitz, who had become an outspoken ally and defender of Donald Trump, was accused of rape by one of the women trafficked by Jeffrey Epstein, I made a brief comment about him on Twitter.  As a result of the rape charge, Dersh (as he is sometimes called) had used Trumpian language and logic, declaring that he had a “perfect sex life,” parroting Trump’s insistence about his “perfect phone call.”  Dersh then pressured Yale, where I had taught for seventeen years, to terminate me, in obvious fear that severe financial and other consequences could result if it did not comply—as the immense control of donors on universities has now been exemplified and exposed.

This is why I have kept up with the ongoing exploits and involvements of Dershowitz, including his most recent, outrageous insistence that lawyers should be forced to divulge—or in effect to “confess”—their political and social views, and that if they do not meet Dersh’s tests not be hired, or if already at law firms fired.  Dersh quite literally and incessantly exploits what we know as the Holocaust to support a fascist regime that most recently, catastrophically failed to prevent if not helped cause brutal Hamas attacks.  Now, he insists that Israel “must” consider nuclear war “to assure its survival.”

In a recent extreme tirade, he even targeted former President Barack Obama, who gave more money and weapons to Israel than any other president, as someone with “a deep hatred of Israel in his heart,” for posing some mild questions.  His labeling all active members in the National Lawyers Guild and Bronx Defenders union as “Hamas supporters,” caused another lawyer to warn of “McCarthyism revisited.”

I have never claimed that Dersh is clinically “psychotic”, despite this being a major topic of discussion.  A few years ago, an article even headlined, “Dershowitz is out of his mind,” when he accused the woman who accused him of rape of being a “prostitute”, something no one else, including Prince Andrew—who paid her millions to silence her—ever even suggested.  More recently, he gave an interview defending sex cult leader Keith Raniere.

I have never met Dershowitz, as he declined to debate me when I invited him to Yale—despite his continuous lie, repeated even a few months ago, that I was the one refusing a discussion.  However, as with Trump, observing his words and actions offers considerably more information about his danger to the public than can any personal interview, in which persons such as he are bound to lie, distort, and mislead.

Perhaps Dersh should indeed undergo a proper psychiatric evaluation, especially in view of his recent statements and behavior, to help diagnose and receive treatment for himself—since while psychosis cannot be confirmed from afar, it also cannot be definitively ruled out.

The bottom line is that when such mentally-impaired, psychologically dangerous, and pathology-spreading individuals as Dershowitz hungrily seek out public exposure and wield such influence against so many people—it becomes a public health threat.  The result is that he intimidates, defames, character-assassinates, persecutes, and muzzles students, faculty, and journalists far and wide, and as a result controls what is allowed to be said, with the goal of furthering aggression and oppression.

Dersh’s latest extremism is his insistence that law schools should now monitor and record the political beliefs and concerns of their students as well as note what they say and which demonstrations they attend—all without regard to how meritorious their legal work is.  According to Dersh, law schools should now provide such information about students to law firms who come to campus to interview, and that the law firms in tandem must “reveal” to their clients if they employ anyone who has certain views now or in the past.  

Dersh has insisted in “An Open Letter to Law Firms that Hire Hamas Supporters,” in the New World Law Journal: “I believe that law firms that hire such supporters of Hamas barbarism have an ethical obligation to disclose the decision they have made to their clients, and to not assign such lawyers to any client without getting their informed consent.”

Add to this Dershowitz’s latest outburst.  Though he continually trades on his status as professor emeritus of Harvard Law School, continues to collect his monthly Harvard check as he has done throughout most of his life, and now, since nearly everyone at Harvard shuns him (he has not likely dared to set foot on the campus in recent years, much like his reluctance to return to Yale when I invited him)—Dersh spews extreme hostility and venom against Harvard: “I want to volunteer … to be a witness against Harvard University….  I am an insider.  I am a whistleblower.  I know everything that Harvard has done, probably more than any human being on the face of the earth, in relation to Jews, since the day I got there in 1964….”

Alan Dershowitz is once again using expressions about himself as being “more than any human being on the face of the earth.”  Indeed, he recently said on Newsmax: “No President did more to attack anti-Semitism on college campuses, anti-Zionism, than Donald Trump.”  It does not take a mental health expert to know that this is not about Israel but a state of mind.  Back in the 1950’s, Senator Joe McCarthy of Wisconsin was responsible for a spread of paranoia that led to a frenzy of political repression and persecution known as “McCarthyism”.  Dershowitz seems oblivious to the parallels, such that what we can call “Dershowitzism” may be a new form of “McCarthyism.”   For some years already, it has become hard to justify much of what Dersh has been saying and doing, so much so that his own colleagues have remarked: “He’s being openly laughed at by the bulk of the legal community.”  But Dersh does not care, as long as it brings him power (and attention), the way McCarthy rose to great power in Washington as a result of his “Red Scare.”  An inevitable downfall and vilification awaits—but not before spreading much sickness and damage throughout our culture.