Alan Dershowitz, a professor of Law at Harvard, is an enthusiast for torture and an apologist for a Greater Israel. Bob Trivers is one of the most distinguished theoretical biologists alive. Dershowitz has been campaigning — alongside racist slime like Martin Peretz — to have the Jewish historian Norman Finkelstein denied tenure because he has written about the use of the Holocaust to justify modern Israeli policies. Dershowitz was also — of course — an enthusiast for last summer’s Israeli invasion of Lebanon.
He just managed to have cancelled a lecture Trivers was due to deliver at Harvard after Trivers wrote to him privately: “Regarding your rationalization of Israeli attacks on Lebanese civilians, let me just say that if there is a repeat of Israeli butchery toward Lebanon and if you decide once again to rationalize it publicly, look forward to a visit from me. Nazis — and Nazi-like apologists such as yourself — need to be confronted directly.”
Dershowitz, tremendously brave when it comes to urging on other people to torture, passed the letter on to the police.
There is an account of this in David Horowitz’ loathsome Front Page which I noticed because it quoted from my profile of Trivers, introducing some quite gratuitous inaccuracies. For a flavour, consider this statement: His juvenile boasting about getting a biology prize aside, Trivers is not best known for his biological writings at all but rather for his long collaboration with Huey Newton and the Black Panthers
The prize to which Front Page is referring is the Crafoord Prize, which is what theoretical biologists get when they are not eligible for a Nobel because their work can’t be represented as “physiology or medicine”.
The comments, also, are quite amusing. I did not add any myself, because you have to register to help the moderators provide “a quality platform for debate”. What quality? you may ask. The quality of this comment:
If the United States is suffers a major attack by terrorists and hundreds of thousands are killed, we need to round all the leftist traitors like Chompsky, Ward Churchill, Trivers, Finklestein and about twenty thousand others . We would put them in all camps, kill them, and stoke up the ovens and crenate them and scatter their ashes to the winds.
UPDATE: As a pendant to this, it is worth reading the interview that Front Page did with Ian Buruma, where the pseudo-trot certainties of the interviewer, who managed to work into one purported question the phrases “Surely you are aware … you are clearly aware, of course … you take into account …, provoked Buruma to respond: “Since you seem to know so precisely what I am aware of, and what I take into account, there may be little point in my continuing this discussion.”
Got to your blog from comments left at scienceblogs.com/gnxp. Had to say thanks for an old favour. I much enjoyed your “The kindness of Strangers” in The Guardian. Since Trivers, is such an underappreciated genius, it goes a long way to let the world get a glimpse of his eventful life – both academical & personal. Am fortunate to have come close to enjoying both these facets of him & would always be a forerunner in his defence.
As for the recent ‘tryst’ with Deshowitz, I am only glad that these have not affected Bob Trivers. However, the Harvard incident was nasty. His sense of humor says if that talk ever gets rescheduled in Harvard, it could well be advertised as the talk Dershowitz did not wish to hear. That’s him. Priceless!
By the way ‘Helmintholog’ is a great name to have for a blog. Being a C.elegans researcher myself, can’t help falling for it. Look forward to reading your book about it ( am surprised I missed it so long).
> By the way ‘Helmintholog’ is a great name to have for
> a blog. Being a C.elegans researcher myself,
Oh boy, and there was me thinking that he was being all clever and Swedish.
Most of what you say is a lie. Show us where does Dershowitz call for a Greater Israel. As Trivers suggested, the best liars are those who believe their won lies. You are a perfect example: you lie and you believe it.
You sound like a normal British far-left anti-Semite. Political hacks like you aren’t capable of distinguishing between political engagement and the work value.
I think Trivers is a loathsome individual and a certainly a rabid Jew-hater and a Jew-murder apologist, as befits a true-believer far-left nutter. I also think, on the basis of the peer-reviewed articles I read by him, that he is a good scientist.
By contrast, your scientific credentials – they’re laughable. Have you ever published something peer-reviewed? You are a vile imbecile without anything to redeem the imbecility.