STAND with Kelly and Niki Tshibaka
One grew up in Alaska; the other grew up abroad. One is a Daughter of the American Revolution and a descendant of generations of American veterans; the other, the son of an African immigrant and a descendant of Congolese chieftains. One was a government watchdog; the other, a civil rights activist. Both had parents who were homeless for a while, and both graduated from Harvard Law School.
Like you, they have suffered devastating loss and faced overwhelming challenges. Through it all, they’ve found victory over the hardships of life simply by choosing to Stand. Join Kelly, Niki, and their inspiring guests as they move beyond simply talking about issues and challenges, to exploring how to solve and overcome them. Together, we will build a movement of everyday Americans who courageously take a stand for freedom, truth, and a country led by “We the People.”
STAND with Kelly and Niki Tshibaka
Free Speech and Fair Trials: Dershowitz's Alaskan Adventure
This week’s episode is An Evening with Alan Dershowitz! The hosts and audience cover a wide range of topics, including the Trump trial in New York, Israel-Palestine conflict, free speech on college campuses, and constitutional law. Dershowitz offers candid insights on his experiences defending high-profile clients, teaching at Harvard, and his views on current political issues. He emphasizes the importance of civil liberties, constitutional rights, and the need for fair legal processes. Questions from the audience touch on subjects like the OJ Simpson trial, COVID-19 policies, and the upcoming U.S. presidential election. Dershowitz shares personal anecdotes and reflections on his career, while also praising Alaska's natural beauty and the open-mindedness of its people.
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That I have caused you pain. I turn them all around.
Speaker 2:If I could start again.
Speaker 1:It's something I must say I know that's over you the sweetest thing I've known.
Speaker 3:Forever called my own big angel tenor Good evening, hello. Hello. I'm saying hi to friends. Hello friends, hello friends. I'm so happy you're here. Thank you for spending this evening with us. Yay, this is going to be amazing. I'm Kelly.
Speaker 2:Shabaka, welcome to our event.
Speaker 3:This is hosted by our TV podcast and radio show Stand. You can see our banners in the back. My husband and I started the show about nine months ago.
Speaker 4:So if you haven't followed us, we're at stanshoworg.
Speaker 2:And if this is the first event that you're like wow, they do that. That's kind of cool, right. So we're so glad you're here.
Speaker 3:This is a spectacular evening, if you're like. What flight am I on? Where are we going? This is a spectacular evening with Alan Dershowitz, and he is so ready for all of your hard but respectful questions. Um, I want to cover some expectations for the evening. I think I forgot to move the sign. One expectation would be betsy, could you please move the off-limits sign for me?
Speaker 2:That's not supposed to be there.
Speaker 3:We're going to just take that straight to the back. Two seats right in the front, just opened up.
Speaker 2:Look at that. Yeah, I was here all afternoon running around with friends setting this great place up and apparently forgot to move a sign.
Speaker 3:So one expectation is get your stuff together, kelly. Next expectation Okay, we're committed to making this an engaging and exciting event for everybody. Yes, yes, and so that means that we're going to have a lot of security here. You see them around Because we want this to be a safe and fun event.
Speaker 2:So we do not all agree with Professor Gershowitz. I do not agree with him on everything.
Speaker 3:And I don't expect you to either. So we're going to have some questions that dive into some controversial topics, and we're also going to take some questions from the audience, and when we do, I would like those questions to be respectful, even if they disagree. If they're not respectful, if we get loud and contentious and somebody decides to throw a protest, you'll be escorted out of the building, the property and the premises. Are we clear? Yes, thank you.
Speaker 2:I am so confident that's not going to happen and instead we're all going to have a wonderful time and you can take pictures and this will be wonderful, right speaking of wonderful, we have some wonderful sponsors, so let's say thank you to our sponsors.
Speaker 3:Thank you so much, sponsors our sponsors are our platinum sponsor. Americans for and they have a lot of free swag that they would love for you to take. Yes, one of the things that they are giving away is if you put in a ticket, we're going to draw tickets at the end to give away one of their awesome.
Speaker 6:I think it's a hoodie right, An upgraded shirt? Yes, a hoodie shirt.
Speaker 3:And there's five of them, not one. I stand corrected Five hoodie shirts that say don't lower 48-mile Alaska.
Speaker 4:You want one of these shirts.
Speaker 2:You have time right now to hustle over to that table, because I'm going to stand up here for a couple more minutes giving the professor time to look at the debate that just happened so he can talk about that and you can get one of those awesome tickets for the hoodies.
Speaker 3:We also have Emerald Senior Housing that sponsored us Blexit at the back where you can learn about that.
Speaker 4:Aurora Kombucha, if you're like I, really need something to drink.
Speaker 2:They're right there, yes, and then over here we have a Revive Alaska Services Say hi guys.
Speaker 3:Hi, we have yes on 2, if you would like to see an enter rank choice voting and look at that You're in a popular crowd.
Speaker 2:No-transcript. Where did she get those?
Speaker 3:shoes.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's already gone viral, I know. So you are welcome to take photos, even when.
Speaker 3:Professor.
Speaker 4:Dershowitz is on stage. You're welcome to take photos and make the whole event go viral.
Speaker 2:I know that there are people who can't be here tonight because they're probably doing other things like not being here tonight.
Speaker 3:I don't know why you would want to do that, so make sure to take pictures and you can send them to them. If you see seats that are open that do not say reserved, you are allowed to sit in those seats. So if you're like I'm not sure I want to look at the back of Kelly Shabaka's head all night, you're welcome to fill one of these seats. Go for it.
Speaker 2:Help yourself. Okay, I'm going to flip the page.
Speaker 3:My kids tell me, mom, don't use your notes, you're not as good of a speaker. Thank you, love you. All right, it's not like I need them. I want to acknowledge special guests in the room tonight, so first because, I see you in the front row.
Speaker 2:We have our Lieutenant Governor with us, nancy Dahlstrom.
Speaker 3:Thank you, nancy, for being here, and I also saw we have some current and former elected leaders.
Speaker 2:So if you are a current or former elected leader, would you please stand so we can give you many thanks for what you do.
Speaker 3:Thank you so much. Yes, we appreciate you. And at this time I want to introduce my friend and our current mayor, dave Bronson, who I asked to come speak tonight because he is a strong supporter of Israel. He is a strong supporter of the Constitution tonight because he is a strong supporter of Israel. He is a strong supporter of the Constitution and he is a strong supporter of freedom. He has served our country with heroism and I appreciate you for doing that so Mayor Dave. Bronson.
Speaker 2:Thank you, Kelly.
Speaker 7:Thank you everyone, Deeply honored to be here as I wind down my service to the city and the taxpayers of this city and the voters of all ilk.
Speaker 4:Kelly offered me this position to welcome to our city, professor.
Speaker 7:Dershowitz. I'm a big fan of his.
Speaker 2:Like Kelly, I don't agree with him on everything, but I admire him deeply because he's a seeker of the truth.
Speaker 7:Since he was 24 years old, he's been working hard to defend the innocent and speak the truth.
Speaker 2:At the end of the day, they say always seek justice.
Speaker 7:I think it's in Deuteronomy. And the essence of justice is the truth and unfortunately, too often in this society especially in politics the truth is just not spoken.
Speaker 4:Words are spoken always with an agenda in mind, with an objective and that's going to be, the downfall of our great country.
Speaker 7:It's certainly challenging at the local level and at the state level we need to speak the truth, and the essence of justice is truth and Professor Dershowitz he does that? Again, I don't always agree with him, but I admire his courage to stand in the gap.
Speaker 2:If you'd read just a very short history of him.
Speaker 7:He's lost a lot of friends, a lot of supporters because he stands up in an environment where anti-Semitism which is a child of the left. It has always been a product of the left.
Speaker 4:National Socialist, hitler was a socialist and socialism is the ideology of the left and he stood up.
Speaker 7:he is standing up and fighting against the anti-Semitism. That's raging and growing in our country and around this world. I admire him more than you can imagine for that courage, for standing up against this scourge that is traveling across this country and across this world so yes, applause for him. So since you didn't come here to listen, to a lame duck, mayor speak. I guess am I introducing the professor.
Speaker 4:I'm giving it back to you.
Speaker 7:Thank you everyone for being here. So appreciate you.
Speaker 3:And I'm so grateful that we all stood and acknowledged Mayor Dave Bronson for what he's done for us for the last three years. We really appreciate you, mayor Dave. Show seeks to make courage contagious by inspiring people to take a stand for freedom truth and government by the people, and a couple months ago we had Professor Dershowitz on, because he does that. He stands for freedom, truth and government by the people. We'll be talking about that tonight, but some people probably not people in this room- have texted me about this event and said who is Alan Dershowitz?
Speaker 3:I'm not really sure how that's possible. I encountered Professor Alan Dershowitz when I was 19 years old at law school and I could not get into his class. It was like they were always full before they even opened, because he's the most popular and also known as the best criminal law attorney in the United States. To this day, to this day.
Speaker 2:And so. I am not a criminal law attorney because I never took a class from Islanders Choice.
Speaker 4:So that's just how that goes, but I did get to go to some of his lectures because they would have these lectures on the site.
Speaker 3:And even at the time, my husband Nicky and I would have our thinking challenged by someone who was just so nuanced and principled in how he thinks. And so my relationship, if you will, with his mentorship and his writing and his thinking, and I hope that you see that tonight was just. It started at that really young age and has continued now for all these years.
Speaker 4:And so we invited him on the show.
Speaker 3:He was the youngest full professor at Harvard Law.
Speaker 2:At Harvard Law.
Speaker 3:And continues to this day as a professor emeritus at the law school and writes all the time. He's written over 50 books. He's written thousands, thousands.
Speaker 4:right Carolyn of articles.
Speaker 3:Yes, Writes every day, travels all the time to do speaking engagements like this. This is his first time speaking in Alaska, so you were the first Alaskan crowd.
Speaker 3:Yep he for those who don't know, as an attorney, he has been a advocate for presidents and prime ministers and people who you've seen movies about and notorious people. And I just asked him so you admit that your clients are criminals? And he boldly said yes, like proudly. And if you want to ask him that question and find out his answer, you're welcome to, because we're going to have some questions from me and Nikki and then, like the last half of tonight, we're going to have questions from you. I'm not going to tell you what he said but I was very impressed with his answer.
Speaker 2:It made me want to be a criminal defense attorney for a minute.
Speaker 3:He just wrote a book called War. Against the Jews about the conflict going on the war going on in Israel right now about how to end Hamas barbarism and then, after that he wrote a book called the War on Woke and the QR codes to get both of those books are on the back of your programs. If you don't know what?
Speaker 4:a.
Speaker 3:QR code is because I can see some audience.
Speaker 2:You can go to wwwamazoncom and it's there so for those of us who are like my age and younger, qr code and for the rest of you they're on Amazon.
Speaker 4:This is the book.
Speaker 3:War on Woke. That you're looking for on Amazon.
Speaker 4:And with that I would like to welcome.
Speaker 3:Professor Alan Dershowitz to the stage. Thank, you. Thank you. Thank you so much. We're so happy to have you.
Speaker 2:Welcome.
Speaker 3:Professor.
Speaker 1:Well, thank you. Thank you so much for inviting me. I've wanted to come to Alaska really all my life and I took a call from Kelly and I really want to thank her and her wonderful family and all of her
Speaker 2:friends.
Speaker 1:Alaska has been a life-changing experience for my wife, who's here somewhere, and me. We have been all over on a cruise. We've eaten the most wonderful food in the world my grandmother wouldn't be proud of some of the food I ate. We had some of the best oysters tonight that you can imagine, but it's been just a great, great experience and I look forward to answering your questions and getting to know some of you. So thank you so much for the honor of speaking to this group of wonderful Alaskans.
Speaker 2:We're so happy you're here and we would be remiss if we did not say happy birthday to Carolyn who just had her birthday. Happy birthday, carolyn. I would sing but I've been told not to.
Speaker 3:So there's that Well, shall we jump, jump right in.
Speaker 10:Yes, let's Sure.
Speaker 3:All right, I think a lot of people here have questions about the Trump trial that just happened in New York, yep.
Speaker 2:And you were there.
Speaker 3:Yep, so Trump gets convicted on 34 felony counts. They say it's falsifying business records. Prosecutors for those who don't know it's an attempt to cover up hush money from this film star named Stormy.
Speaker 4:Daniels but.
Speaker 3:Americans across the country are outraged about what looks like a miscarriage of justice, because it's based on an unprecedented legal foundation, and you heard the evidence. You observed the proceedings firsthand. What were some of the things you experienced?
Speaker 4:while you were there. That shocked, or?
Speaker 3:concerned you and specifically because I've heard you talk about this. I'd like you to address what you saw the judge do with one of Trump's main defense witnesses, Robert. Costello who's an attorney who had advised Michael Cohen.
Speaker 1:Well, first let me start with that last point.
Speaker 2:The judge decided to clear the courtroom.
Speaker 6:He kicked everybody out of the courtroom For some bizarre reason he let me stay.
Speaker 1:And I watched him do his best imitation of Robert De Niro. He looks at the witness and he says you talking to me?
Speaker 2:You looking at me? If you talk to me or look?
Speaker 6:at me one more time.
Speaker 1:I'm going to hold you in contempt and I'm gonna strike your testimony".
Speaker 4:He didn't think anybody was there to report on what he was doing but he engaged in outrageous, outrageous misconduct, but the more general point is this.
Speaker 1:I've been teaching and practicing and writing about criminal law for 60 years. It's now almost a month since the conviction. I have no idea what he was convicted of. I have no idea. The judge created a multiple choice test, for the jury Said look, he should have said that it was hush money. By the way, would anybody ever pay hush money if they knew they had a list on corporate forms?
Speaker 2:that they were paying hush money. Would Alexander Hamilton have done it when he paid hush?
Speaker 1:money? No, of course not. So the judge basically said look, if you conclude that he paid the hush money and that he fraudulently stated it as a legal expense.
Speaker 1:Of course, it is in some respects a legal expense, because he was doing it to in part, avoid a lawsuit then you have to in order to turn this misdemeanor, which is based on an expired statute of limitations, misdemeanor to turn it into a viable felony you have to conclude that he did it in order to cover up or commit another crime. Now, what are? Those other crimes. Well, you, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, you don't have to tell us what it is. You don't have to prove any of them beyond a reasonable doubt All you have to do is conclude that he committed one of them. And here's what the three were.
Speaker 1:One that he intended to evade taxes. Two years later, when he had to pay his taxes. Of course corporations don't pay their taxes in the year they're due. Usually they pay them a couple of years later.
Speaker 2:He didn't take these as deductions, but he might have, so that was one theory.
Speaker 1:The next theory is although he didn't have to list campaign contributions until after the election. Maybe he intended to improperly list this as a campaign contribution? And third, he did it. He engaged in the fraudulent statement in order to cover up the fraudulent statement. Those were the three and the jury didn't have to say which ones they agreed on or whether they agreed at all. He could have had four on this. Four on this it's like cards wild in poker.
Speaker 2:You just don't know and it will be very difficult for him to appeal this because if he shows there, was insufficient evidence on one, they'll say, well, maybe it was the other maybe it was the other. I've never seen a case as bad as this one in my years of practice.
Speaker 1:And this is the same prosecutor, who, two months later, dismissed all the charges against Columbia students who had taken over and occupied Hamilton Hall on the theory that there was insufficient evidence to go after them judged by the criteria of the sufficiency of the evidence to go after. Trump. There was more than sufficient evidence.
Speaker 2:So this was an example of the weaponization of the criminal justice system for partisan purposes.
Speaker 4:There was one goal.
Speaker 1:Look. I'm not a Republican. Sorry, I am not a conservative.
Speaker 4:I am a liberal.
Speaker 2:Democrat. I voted for Hillary Clinton. I voted for Biden.
Speaker 1:I voted for Obama. I don't know who I'm going to vote for this time, but I can tell you that the idea that you use the criminal justice system to go after somebody, and that's what they did here. They went after Trump for tonight. They went after Trump so that tonight in the debate Joe Biden can say you are a convicted felon hoping to influence independent voters. And of course Trump has one hand tied behind his back.
Speaker 1:He can't say what I can say Well, but I was convicted by a judge whose daughter worked to raise money for the Democratic Party and who clearly would benefit from a conviction in this case he can't say that and who clearly would benefit from a conviction.
Speaker 2:in this case he can't say that that's barred by the gag order.
Speaker 1:He can't say that the jurors in this case all voted for Biden and against Trump, and it was not a jury of the Spears or a fair jury. So he couldn't do that, and so the victim of this is not just Donald Trump, it's all Americans. You know the First Amendment applies not only to the speaker, but you all have a First Amendment right to hear what Donald Trump has to say, whether you agree with it or disagree with it.
Speaker 2:And, as you said in your introduction, you disagree with things I say. I disagree with things you say.
Speaker 10:I certainly disagree with some of the things that Trump said tonight in the debate and I disagree with some of the things that Trump said tonight in the debate and I disagree with some of the things Biden said in the debate but we are the judge of that, not some judge in New York.
Speaker 1:We are the judge. We decide who we're gonna vote for based on our assessment of the totality of the circumstances. So, as a lawyer, I'm appalled at the way in which the criminal justice system is being weaponized and misused for partisan purposes.
Speaker 2:And, ultimately, if they can come after Trump they can come after you.
Speaker 10:As they did. Come after your senator.
Speaker 1:Stevens and I've had experience here in this state with legal system. I defended Senator Mike Gravel Remember him. He read the Pentagon Papers into the congressional record and I was his lawyer in the. Supreme Court of the United States in that case. We won that case and established a very important precedent against prior restraint and prior restraint means a gag order. So the. Gravel case actually has implications for the Trump case. What a good question, thank you. You gave me a real opportunity to answer fully, but get ready with your hard questions.
Speaker 4:I mean, she's such a nice person, she's going to throw me some softballs.
Speaker 1:I'm counting on you to ask all the hard questions.
Speaker 3:I'm counting on you too. Get ready for those hard questions, Okay.
Speaker 10:Well, I got another softball for you, okay, so we've talked about the trial. We know that Trump got convicted, generally, I think folks know that the judges set the sentencing hearing for just a few days before the Republican convention.
Speaker 8:There's been a lot of talk about what he's going to do.
Speaker 10:Will Trump get prison time? Will he get community?
Speaker 2:service. Will he get a?
Speaker 10:fine and lots of different theories behind.
Speaker 2:Why the judge?
Speaker 10:might pick one of those solutions. What do you think will be his sentence for Trump?
Speaker 1:Well, first of all, the judge made up his mind a long time ago.
Speaker 2:I mean, there's no secret here. The judge made up his mind.
Speaker 4:He will give him the harshest sentence he can get away with, which means the harshest sentence, that won't backfire and help Trump and the harshest sentence that won't encourage the appellate courts to reverse the conviction. So my prediction pretty good so far. Making predictions about the legal system, my prediction is he will give him a two-year prison sentence suspended. He will say you deserve two years, that's what your sentence should be but because you're
Speaker 2:running for president and you know Secret Service, I'm going to suspend the sentence. So I think it will be a two-year suspended sentence with probably some probationary constraints, but he will not go to prison.
Speaker 1:I guarantee you that on election day, he will be out of prison. Now don't know where Hunter Biden will be, because he too is a convicted felon, by the way. I wouldn't have brought either of those cases.
Speaker 4:Hunter Biden is clearly guilty, but mostly, mostly, for the most part people are not charged with simply making misstatements about drug use on a gun application.
Speaker 2:Now, you up here know a lot more about guns and gun applications than a kid from Brooklyn knows.
Speaker 1:But I have a lot of experience with representing people and generally they go after people for making misstatements on gun applications when they've committed a crime with the gun, and then they enhance the sentence by adding a year or two for the misstatement, but they generally don't rummage through all the applications and say aha this guy said he wasn't a drug addict.
Speaker 2:Let's check it out to see if he was. So I don't like selective prosecutions, whether they operate against the Democrats or the Republicans, you know I offered to represent.
Speaker 1:Secretary Mayorkas in his impeachment because I thought like Trump he may have done things that deserve criticism and condemnation. But the Constitution is very clear. It says treason, bribery or other high crimes and misdemeanors.
Speaker 4:Trump didn't commit any of those and neither did Mayorkas, but I think we're seeing a world where there's tit for tat, and if the Democrats go after a Republican, the Republicans are going to go after the Democrats and again we
Speaker 1:are all losers if that happens.
Speaker 10:Absolutely Just to pivot a little bit, because I thought this was a very interesting, well, alternative attack from, in terms of the right, on what new york has done. The republican attorney general of missouri, andrew bailey, announced last week that they are filing lawsuit against the state of new york and I'm paraphrasing what he said here but basically for a direct attack on the democratic process and engaging in on in unconstitutional lawfare. What do you think about that case and that lawsuit, about its merits?
Speaker 1:Well, it's so interesting, he's not the only person. There are, I don't know, 15 or 20 states, including South Carolina and Attorney General.
Speaker 8:Wilson down there and others who are considering filing this lawsuit.
Speaker 1:It's a stretch and I don't think the court will grant standing Standing means. Have you personally been hurt enough to?
Speaker 7:bring the lawsuit.
Speaker 2:The Supreme Court rendered a decision just yesterday on standing and was very tough on the standing issue. So, although the case is a very interesting one, what basically?
Speaker 1:the theory is look, we in Missouri or we in South Carolina have the right to have a fair national election and New York by weaponizing a criminal trial to hurt a candidate is hurting our ability to have a fair election.
Speaker 2:Trump during the debate tonight was asked will you accept the results of the election?
Speaker 4:And I had predicted before what his answer would be yes, if it's fair.
Speaker 1:And the question is will it be fair?
Speaker 2:You know we're one of the few democracies in the world that don't have an election commission Most democratic countries in England, Israel.
Speaker 1:Most European countries have an election commission that has the power to evaluate on an ongoing, real-time basis whether there are problems. For example there's a great debate in this country about voting machines. I'm involved in that debate. I don't believe, and I've never believed, that private companies should be able to perform a government function that is counting votes, without submitting themselves to the kind of scrutiny, the government would have to submit itself to so by the way, for making that argument I was sanctioned by a Democratic judge in. Arizona for making that constitutional argument.
Speaker 8:I mean, it seems to me it's so obvious that argument is correct, I mean if for example
Speaker 2:a lot of government functions now are being performed by private parties. Prisons are now being run.
Speaker 4:Can you imagine?
Speaker 2:somebody who runs a prison for profit saying, well, I'm not gonna let you see what kind of food we're serving because we're a private company.
Speaker 1:If you're performing a government function, you have to behave like the government, which means transparency, so I'm hoping that we'll see a fair election. It's absolutely essential that we see a fair election and because you know, democracy requires not only that the election be fair but that it be perceived to be fair. And it's absolutely critical that this election be above reproach, and I hope it is.
Speaker 3:I think we all agree. So let's transition to talk about Israel, because you just wrote a book last year called the War Against the Jews how to End Hamas.
Speaker 2:Barbarism. It's fantastic. I read it. I think everybody in here has right If you haven't, I recommend you get it so on October 7th we had at least 1,200 Jews murdered in Israel.
Speaker 3:It's the largest loss of life. By the way, they weren't all Jews.
Speaker 1:There were some Indonesian workers, there were Philippine workers, there were Arab Israelis who were killed. 1,200 Israelis were killed. The vast majority of them were Jewish and almost all of them were civilians, but they also killed non-Jews, anybody who was working for Jews or? In Israel was killed. And some of the people who did the killing were people who had worked for. Israelis from Gaza and had been given high wages and used their opportunity to spy against. Israel and provide secrets. There's one.
Speaker 4:I'll just interrupt for one second because it was so meaningful to me.
Speaker 2:I went to Israel shortly after all this happened and I was taken to the places where it happened and I was told about a woman named Silver I can't remember her first name who was a major peacenik.
Speaker 2:She would go up to the border almost every day and bring sick people from Gaza into Israel to work on, to go to hospitals and pay for their treatment and the first thing that happened is the people who worked with her and the people who she saved pointed out to the terrorists where her safe room was, and they burned her to death.
Speaker 4:And that's what happened there, among other things. And of course, you have people today who still deny it.
Speaker 1:The man who lost for Congress the other night in New York, Jamal Bowman, denied that there were rapes and Me Too, the Me Too movement. I don't know how many of you support the Me Too movement, but it's changed its name Me.
Speaker 6:Too, except if you're a Jew. They deny these rapes.
Speaker 2:You should believe every woman and you should.
Speaker 1:Every woman who makes a claim should have that claim investigated thoroughly, thoroughly, thoroughly, and the evidence should be evaluated. But the MeToo movement hasn't said a peep about the many Israeli women who have been brutally raped and raped as part of this effort to try to destroy the nation state of the Jewish people.
Speaker 3:So you make the point in your book that this is the largest terrorist attack and largest loss of Jewish life since the Holocaust and it seems like Israel's right to defend itself is logical. And yet we've seen this mass movement, not only in America but really across the world, to rise up and support Hamas.
Speaker 1:Not just.
Speaker 3:Palestinian people, but Hamas, On the grounds that this is a colonial state. These people are oppressed and we need to push back against the occupiers, Israel, we just wanted to get your take on all that.
Speaker 1:Well, first the argument is so totally false.
Speaker 4:Israel is the last thing to a colonial settler state, In Israel's case Jews have lived in what? Is now Israel since recorded history.
Speaker 1:The Bible talks about. Abraham moving to what is now Hebron, to Israel. We know from excavations that Jews have lived there. The whole New Testament is based on Jewish presence in.
Speaker 2:Jerusalem Jesus knocks over the bunny lenders in the temple.
Speaker 1:The temple was the Jewish temple.
Speaker 2:Jesus was himself obviously born of Jewish parents, and so this was a return to a land that had been occupied by Jews had been populated by Jews until the Romans threw them out and changed the name of the country from Judea which is where the word Jew comes from Judea to Palestina, which is a made-up name.
Speaker 1:And there were no Palestinian people at the time In fact, a very large percentage of people who now are Palestinians are people who came to Israel from Egypt and from Syria when the Jews began to come back in the 19th century and build Kibbutzim and farms, etc. Look, it's a complicated issue but it wouldn't have been a complicated issue.
Speaker 4:Israel fought a colonial war against.
Speaker 1:Great Britain. It blew up the King David Hotel, which was the place where England had all of its colonial experiences and it fought against colonialism and established self-determination for the Jewish people. I mean there are colonial settler states, not recently but, New Zealand is a perfect example. Nobody who lives in New Zealand except for the Maori people, had any connection with New Zealand they came from.
Speaker 4:England.
Speaker 1:They came to settle colonialists, they killed and exiled much of the Maori population and New. Zealand is always the first country to vote against Israel, calling it a colonial state, so it's nonsense.
Speaker 2:There could have been a two-state solution In 1949, the UN voted to partition the mandate into two states a Jewish state, tiny little Jewish state, with a majority of Jews in it on the coastline of the Mediterranean and a much larger area of arable land that would have been owned by a Palestinian state the. Palestinians said no, there's no such thing. This is the head of the Palestinian movement, Hajar al-Husseini, saying there's no such thing as the Palestinian people.
Speaker 1:We are all part of the greater Arab people. We don't want there to be a Palestinian state. We just don't want there to be a Jewish state.
Speaker 4:So there could have been a two-state solution, and there wasn't.
Speaker 1:And the Nakba. We hear so much about the Nakba. There wouldn't have been a. Nakba? Had the Arab states not invaded Israel and tried to destroy? It genocidally, and only in a defensive war did Israel then fight and many of the Arabs left and were not allowed to return Israel offered, by the way, the right of return to 50,000 of them when Ehud Omer offered a two-state solution.
Speaker 4:After Bill Clinton and Ehud Barak offered a two-state solution after Bill Clinton and Ehud Barak offered a two-state solution the Palestinian leadership doesn't know how to take yes for an answer.
Speaker 1:And they could have had a state Of all the countries that lack statehood, the Palestinians' claim is the least compelling.
Speaker 6:The Kurds have a much stronger claim, the Uyghurs in China have a much stronger claim.
Speaker 1:But have you ever heard a college student march for Kurds? No, have you ever heard a college student march for the Ukrainians? Have you heard college students march for what's going?
Speaker 4:on in Darfur again today with genocide?
Speaker 1:No, it's only Israel.
Speaker 2:And there's only one explanation for it, and that is because Israel is the nation state of the Jewish people.
Speaker 1:And the hatred of anything Jewish has been so pervasive throughout history and it's so important that all groups, all religious groups Protestant, catholic, Muslim, jewish all unite together to fight back against the newly emerging anti-Semitism that is so rampant today. Look, there are three groups that are part of these demonstrations. There are the radical socialists of America, the extremists who hate America would love to see America fail. These are anarchists these would be called communists.
Speaker 2:They don't care about Israel or Palestine, they care about America. They want to bring down America. That's one group.
Speaker 1:The second group are Muslims and. Arabs who have legitimate concern. Nobody's going to change their mind. They don't want to see a. Jewish state and the third group are the useful idiots your children my children my grandchildren, my nephews and nieces, who wouldn't know what river or what sea they were talking about. They just follow any demonstration and if it's a leftist demonstration, they join it. And it's so important to respond and not to allow these three groups to dominate. They're destroying education in. America.
Speaker 4:They're really making it hard for our children and grandchildren to learn anything in school, and so it's very important not to sit idly by and just allow this takeover to occur, because it's a takeover, not only a safe space for Jewish students it's to take over the entire educational process.
Speaker 1:This thing called DEI diversity equity and inclusion is anti-American to its core. Remember Martin Luther.
Speaker 4:King's dream. I was there.
Speaker 2:I was there, I was a law clerk. I have a dream that someday my children will be evaluated not by the color of their skin but by the content of their character. That's what I lived for.
Speaker 1:That's what I fought for.
Speaker 2:That's what I went down south and fought for, and today it's the opposite In the DEI people are judged only by their identity.
Speaker 1:No more meritocracy, no more judge people by how good they are. How many people here would like? Next time surgery has to be done on you or your loved ones to be done by somebody who was picked based on their identity rather than on their competence. My wife and I were on a plane two years ago from Martha's Vineyard to Boston. It was the worst storm ever, and everybody on that plane was hoping this is not a DEI pilot.
Speaker 1:Everybody was hoping this pilot was picked because, he was the best possible pilot to fly us through storms. And so we have to fight against this un-American way of valuing people. Yes, everybody needs a fair break and we do have to have recognition of the horrible way in which we treated African Americans and other minorities and continue in some instances to treat them.
Speaker 2:But the answer is not to abolish meritocracy, the answer is to give everybody more of an opportunity to make it and to compete in the American marketplace of ideas. And unless we do that, we will lose our place in the world as the leader and I think that's part of the goals of some of these people is to reduce.
Speaker 1:America's role in the world as a leader. So I for one will continue to fight as a liberal. I will continue to fight against these perversions of justice.
Speaker 10:Really, really appreciate that insight, professor Gershwitz, and that's a great segue into the question that I have from our platinum sponsor, americans for Prosperity. They'd like to hear from you more about the challenges with higher education. It seems to them and to us that we no longer have a culture that encourages academic freedom, freedom of thought, freedom of speech. Is this reversible, and if so, how? Because you've been fighting this battle at Harvard for years.
Speaker 1:I was fighting it since I was in elementary school and my rabbis wouldn't let me speak out critically, so I've been fighting it against oppression of free speech. I don't know if it's reversible. It's very difficult. The.
Speaker 4:Dean of Social Sciences at Harvard. A very decent man, the Dean of Social Sciences at.
Speaker 1:Harvard recently wrote an op-ed piece in the. Harvard. Crimson, in which he said we have much too much free speech on university campuses and professors and students shouldn't be free to criticize the administrations and shouldn't feel free to tell alumni that Harvard is doing things wrong, because it will hurt Harvard if they know the truth.
Speaker 2:This is the dean of social sciences at Harvard.
Speaker 1:We had to form a group at. Harvard called basically the lobby group for free speech at Harvard. Who would imagine you'd need a special group to support free speech at a university like Harvard? But it is true and I think a lot of parents are making decisions and kids are making decisions now to have their young people go to different colleges. I think the Ivy Leagues have justifiably suffered over the years.
Speaker 1:I think more students are going to Vanderbilt and Emory and other places in Texas and in the South and University of Florida, and I don't know enough about the situation up here. But I do know that Harvard and Yale and Princeton don't have a monopoly on learning and education and if I was starting out a career now as a teacher I think I'd be more inclined to take a job at one of these other universities. Look, I was educated at.
Speaker 1:Brooklyn College, which was a free city school, mostly for immigrant kids, and we really learned a lot there. And we had great professors and great students, and I just think that we have to broaden the base of American education and fight back against this attempt to impose a straitjacket on thought. To impose a straitjacket on thought, we now have professors who are arguing that free speech is a patriarchal, colonial, imperialist way of keeping people down. You know, it's the marketplace of ideas, winston.
Speaker 1:Churchill said about democracy what I would say, about free speech, the worst form of governance ever except for all the others that have been tried over time? And what's the alternative to free speech?
Speaker 4:Having the dean of the social sciences.
Speaker 2:Tell us what we can say. No, let that be judged by the market. So, another question from our platinum sponsor, americans, for Prosperity question from our platinum sponsor.
Speaker 4:Americans for Prosperity. We've seen a lot going on in the tension.
Speaker 3:If you will, we talked about this a little earlier today, between the bureaucrats and the alphabet agencies that make up the executive branch Congress and the courts so we wanted to ask you specifically what do you think of the balance of power? Right now between those groups of people and do you think the system balance of power right now between those groups of people?
Speaker 2:And do you think the system of checks and balances is working?
Speaker 5:the way that it is intended to work by the law.
Speaker 1:It isn't working that way, and I think we're about to see a revolution.
Speaker 2:I do think the Supreme Court will decide maybe tomorrow, maybe Monday, maybe Tuesday next week, maybe tomorrow, maybe Monday, maybe Tuesday next week and, if not now, in the near term that administrative agencies hurt the system of checks and balances rather than help it.
Speaker 4:You know, you hear words about the unitary executive, as if that's some fascist plot, that's what the Constitution provided Three branches of government.
Speaker 1:If that's some fascist plot, that's what the Constitution provided Three branches of government, the third branch, the executive branch is headed by one person the. President of the United States who's elected in a duly appropriate manner and the President gets to control the executive branch, he can delegate authority to administrative agencies and Congress, within limits he can delegate authority to administrative agencies and Congress, within limits, can delegate its authority to administrative agencies. But what we're seeing is the Supreme Court saying, uh-uh, don't assume that Congress or the President has delegated those powers you have to have proof that they have, Otherwise the power remains within the branch that had the power to set up the agencies in the first part.
Speaker 4:So I think we're gonna see a revolution.
Speaker 1:I think we're seeing a change there's tradition too.
Speaker 2:Take, for example, the issue of the Justice Department.
Speaker 1:The Justice Department is simply an agency of the executive. The president could theoretically decide who to prosecute, who not to prosecute. Thomas Jefferson decided to prosecute Aaron Burr.
Speaker 4:Not only that, he got his cousin to do the prosecution and he got his other cousin to be the judge, John Marshall.
Speaker 1:Talk about targeting people. I mean Aaron Bur Barr tried to steal the presidency from Thomas Jefferson in the 1800 election, and it's so important to understand that you just can't tell the president that his power is limited because we want it to be limited.
Speaker 6:There's a tradition in the Justice Department Look the framers of the United.
Speaker 1:States Constitution made a mistake and the early Judiciary Act made a mistake. Almost every other country in the world divides the functions of the Justice. Department into two. The Attorney General has a schizophrenic role which is impossible to perform. From 9 to 12 every day. He is the political advisor of the president whose job it is to help the president, get reelected to be a loyal member of the cabinet.
Speaker 4:That's the job of the attorney general.
Speaker 6:Then there's lunch break, and from one to four or one to five, his job is to decide who to prosecute.
Speaker 2:Objectively neutrally not to benefit the president.
Speaker 1:So that's why we have special counsel.
Speaker 2:Other countries don't have special counsel. England doesn't have special counsel special prosecutors.
Speaker 4:Why?
Speaker 1:They have a full-time director of public prosecution which is outside the political sphere Same thing is true with Israel. The Attorney General of Israel, the prosecutors are not part of the government.
Speaker 2:Look who is true with Israel the.
Speaker 1:Attorney General of Israel. The prosecutors are not part of the government. Look who they're prosecuting.
Speaker 2:They're prosecuting the Prime Minister. The regular Attorney General of Israel is prosecuting the Prime Minister.
Speaker 1:Four Prime Ministers have gone to jail in Israel.
Speaker 4:I know.
Speaker 2:I visited one of them. I represented one of them Ehud Elmer.
Speaker 1:When I visited him in prison he was being guarded by a young Arab guard, and I created a joke as a result of my visit to the Prime Minister of Israel in his prison. The joke was when you ask a prime minister for his cell number, it's not necessarily his telephone, so his cell number was eight, and there he was serving time.
Speaker 4:A president of Israel went to prison as well.
Speaker 2:And now the International Criminal Court is trying to prosecute. Israeli prime ministers because they don't think Israel has a good enough judicial system. Well, I'm representing, I'm helping to represent Prime Minister Netanyahu in this case, I spoke to him yesterday I spoke to him the day before and today we had a big victory in the case Great Britain, to its credit.
Speaker 1:I don't know if it'll continue, because Great Britain now has a conservative government which is generally fairly fair to Israel. But the Labor Party's about to win and the Labor Party is very anti-Israel.
Speaker 1:But the current great British government has asked the International Criminal Court today to file an amicus curiae brief claiming that the International Criminal Court has no jurisdiction over Israel because Israel has a fair judicial system and under what's called a special rule that requires that the court defer to the local jurisdiction if they have a legitimate investigative power. Great Britain has said that that should be the rule and the International Criminal.
Speaker 4:Code is no jurisdiction.
Speaker 1:I will be filing a brief along similar lines as well. And so we live in interesting times. So much is going on. It's a great time to be a lawyer. I think I'm 85 years old and. I've never had more fun practicing law and being involved in so many different things.
Speaker 4:I just hope the good Lord gives me the strength and the power, with the help of my wife and family to continue to do this for years to come.
Speaker 3:This is a good time for us to transition to questions from the audience, so I'm going to ask our volunteers to grab microphones. We're going to take them one section at a time.
Speaker 4:We've got two microphones for the audience and we'll have Professor.
Speaker 3:Dershowitz, interact with the audience and, as we start the transition time, I want to remind us that at the end of this time, at the end of question and answer time, we're going to be doing the drawings for the hoodies. We're going to be auctioning off a signed copy of War on Woke from Professor Dershowitz and we also if you picked up when you came in the Africa Hunt so yeah, thank you, Logan.
Speaker 3:A 10-day South Africa Hunt for four. Donation value $20,000, May 1st through 12th, and a portion of the proceeds from all these things are going to go to help benefit emergency support services in Israel. So keep all this in the back of your mind as we transition to the questions Do you all need our microphones?
Speaker 2:Okay, Nikki and I are going to step down so everyone can see Professor Dershowitz better. Hi Professor, Thank you so much for coming all the way up here Earlier today I was listening to Glenn Greenwald.
Speaker 1:I'm sorry, a little louder.
Speaker 4:Earlier today I was listening to.
Speaker 5:Glenn Greenwald and Tucker Carlson and they were discussing the concept that the right is hypocritical. The right is hypocritical because we're offended by people saying from the river to the sea that we're being snowflakes about it, as we have used the term before, and that it's free speech. And I'm just wondering where you feel if is there a line there?
Speaker 1:It's a great question. I mean calling for the death of the Jews is free speech.
Speaker 4:Being a Nazi is free speech.
Speaker 1:Saying that blacks should be segregated or sent back to Africa. Jews should be sent back to Poland or Germany, that's all free speech, and I wouldn't stop that free speech, but I would condemn it.
Speaker 2:And the same thing is true I wouldn't prevent people from saying from the river to the sea. I would just argue with it and argue that it's wrong.
Speaker 1:Now here's the problem Today on campus. You can say you can say from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free of Jews.
Speaker 4:You can say that.
Speaker 1:But if I tried to go to a college campus today and say that the Palestinian people really are not a legitimate group for statehood, I think I'd be, banned. I think there's a double standard of free speech.
Speaker 2:And as long as there's a single standard. I'm in favor of complete free speech in the marketplace of ideas, but I'd love to ask look, tucker Carlson banned me from his show when he was on Fox because when he was talking about immigration, I said Tucker.
Speaker 4:I've looked up your family history and you were the grandson of Irish immigrants. And you ought to be more sympathetic to immigrants in general.
Speaker 1:I'm not talking about illegal immigrants, immigrants in general, and he got furious at me and told his staff never to allow me to be on the show again, so so much for free speech and you know we're seeing so much in my book, the War Unwoke. There's so much denial of free speech from the left particularly.
Speaker 2:I'm not talking about Tucker Carlson now.
Speaker 1:Greenwald.
Speaker 4:I don't even know whether he's left or right. I can never understand.
Speaker 1:I debated him recently.
Speaker 6:I never understand which side he comes from.
Speaker 4:But Tucker Carlson we know what side he comes from.
Speaker 1:So for me, I'm a free speech. I'm an almost absolutist. I'm an almost absolutist. I don't think there should be free speech for somebody to name our spies or give out our nuclear codes or do things that pose a direct, direct danger. But when it comes to political speech, as long as we can debate in the market. I got a call today from a school in the United States College. They asked me if I would come and speak about Israel and I said sure.
Speaker 4:Then I got a call back saying well, they won't let you speak about Israel unless you are willing to debate an anti-Israel speaker.
Speaker 1:Will you do that? And I said sure, on one condition that that rule is a uniform rule, that you wouldn't allow a pro-Palestinian speaker to speak without there being a pro-Israel speaker, if you can assure me that the rule is neutral.
Speaker 2:I will come and they're going to get back to me and see if that can happen.
Speaker 4:Professor Dershowitz. Yeah, my name's. Cecilia.
Speaker 5:It's so good to talk to home. We found the same neck of the woods, and so I'm really glad you're here but I want to change the topic for a moment.
Speaker 4:I've kind of reviewed the OJ trial quite a bit. Some people here don't even know what that is, but I found it hard to for one man, even though he was supposedly a big man, to massacre two people and come away with just a scrape on his finger. Knowing Ron Goldman was a black belt in karate. How did one man do all that?
Speaker 1:Well, you know that's a question I can't answer.
Speaker 2:I don't know the answer.
Speaker 4:Look first of all even if OJ Simpson had confessed to me that he did it.
Speaker 1:I couldn't tell you that as his lawyer.
Speaker 4:And I'll tell you a funny story about that. When Bibi Netanyahu got elected prime minister, it was 1996.
Speaker 1:Carolyn and I were in Israel. I was writing a book, and I had known Bibi, since he was a student at MIT, and so he invited us and our daughter to come to the Prime Minister's office and take pictures and stuff.
Speaker 2:So we did, and then he pulled me aside and said Alan, there's a question I'm dying to ask you.
Speaker 1:I've been dying to ask you for a long time.
Speaker 2:I thought he was gonna ask me about Iran or Palestinians. He said did, OJ do it. And I said Mr.
Speaker 1:Prime Minister, there's a question I've been dying to ask you Does Israel have nuclear weapons? And he said well, you know, I can't tell you that. And I said well, you know, I can't tell you that. So the issue on which we won the OJ case was not guilt or innocence. It was the fact that the government planted a piece of evidence. It was a sock that was found near OJ's bed and they claimed to have found his blood and the blood of the victims on the sock and we were able to find the sock.
Speaker 2:And we were able to find the sock evidence.
Speaker 1:It was a sock that was found near OJ's bed, and they claimed to have found his blood and the blood of the victims on the sock and we were able to prove that the blood had in it a chemical called EDTA, which is not found in the human body but found in test tubes. So we were able to prove that the police had poured blood from a test tube onto the sock and that's how we won the case. During the dinner before this tonight, one of our brilliant questioners asked me so is it true?
Speaker 1:most of your clients have been guilty. And I said yes and thank God for that Would anybody want to live in a country where the majority of people charged with crime are innocent.
Speaker 4:You know that's.
Speaker 1:Iran, that's Syria, that's China, that's.
Speaker 4:Russia. It's not the United States, of course the majority of people charged with crime are guilty, which means that every lawyer represents people who are guilty.
Speaker 1:Sometimes our goal is to just get the charge reduced to plea bargain. Sometimes it's to try to challenge the charge reduced to plea bargain.
Speaker 4:Sometimes it's to try to challenge the government's evidence.
Speaker 1:But the best way to make sure that most people tried for crime are guilty is for everybody to receive a zealous defense, and that's what I've tried to do over the last half century. Oj Simpson was a challenging case and.
Speaker 2:I lost a couple of friends over that not much, but when I represented Donald Trump virtually every one of my friends on Martha's Vineyard turned against me and against my wife and against my family.
Speaker 1:And it was just pure McCarthyism, holding the client responsible, the lawyer responsible for the client. I'm going to continue to represent people that you don't like and that I don't like, and that's the job of the lawyer, just as it is the job of my grandchildren both of whom are doctors and work in emergency rooms and they don't ask the question when somebody's wheeled in with a heart attack.
Speaker 2:Are you a Republican or a Democrat? They ask the question do you have a heart attack? And as a lawyer, I have to behave similarly.
Speaker 1:I have to raise constitutional issues on behalf of people I don't like I have sometimes in my heart of hearts, in the middle of the night when I'm defending somebody actually rooted for his conviction.
Speaker 2:I don't ever act on that, but I say with my fingers crossed it wouldn't, hurt me at all if this guy you know, I represented, I defended Nazis in.
Speaker 1:Skokie.
Speaker 2:I was hoping they'd be hit by a bus but I didn't want them to be censored because that affects us all.
Speaker 9:So I'm a physician. I loan a farm right over here. No to your left, okay yeah, hi to your left. Okay, yeah, okay One. My mom worked for Senator Stevens for 13 years. You're absolutely right.
Speaker 2:It was totally corrupt what happened to him, so thank you for that comment.
Speaker 9:Second of all, as a physician who came out for early treatment saved 3000 lives no deaths because of early treatment from COVID. I was appalled at the censorship that happened when we were just trying to get the information out to save lives. And then when I started seeing strokes in my 26-year-old patients and heart attacks in 40-year-old patients from the vaccine, and I tried to write lots of exemptions, but they were ignored for an experimental treatment.
Speaker 9:Sherry, who was sitting right next to me, lost 30 years of retirement because she refused it and ended up being fired from the federal government. My question is is there ever going to be restitution? I know kansas sued pfizer recently, but what are we going to do with all the people that were really harmed because they either refused the vaccine or they took the vaccine under force and were harmed? Look, this is the hardest question.
Speaker 1:The hardest question you can possibly ask. I own a letter written by George Washington to his troops in the middle of the Revolutionary War. Washington didn't actually write the letter.
Speaker 2:He signed the letter, but the letter was written by his obscure young secretary, a kid named Alexander.
Speaker 1:Hamilton. So I have the letter three pages all in the hand of Hamilton signed by Washington, in which he says essentially we're not going to lose this war to Britain, but we may lose it to smallpox and so I am ordering every one of my soldiers to receive inoculation against smallpox Now of course he's a general. A general is entitled to tell his troops what to do. The President of the. United States is not the commander-in-chief of the ordinary citizen, he's only the commander-in-chief of the armed forces.
Speaker 2:He can't tell us what to do.
Speaker 1:I think how to treat a contagious disease like COVID, which had a lot of deaths early on, is one of the most difficult questions imaginable. It was John Stuart Mill, the great philosopher who said that the government should never be allowed to compel anybody to do anything just to benefit themselves. But if it benefits the collection of people then some compulsion is permitted Now, when you order something like the.
Speaker 2:COVID you can call it a vaccine. You can call it something else.
Speaker 1:There's scientific debates about that. You're making a very, very difficult cost-benefit analysis. To do nothing would be extraordinarily costly.
Speaker 2:To do something too quickly can be extraordinarily costly.
Speaker 1:What's not costly and what must be done is a complete, objective, honest analysis of everything that went on who, what was right, what was was wrong was too much compulsion used were too many people fired for not taking um the injections. We now have the ability in the time to look back and to make wise decisions about the future, because covid is not going to be our last communicable disease.
Speaker 9:We're going to have more. You have a follow-up?
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 9:Yes, One of the things that we have to do as a physician is inform our patients of the risk and benefit. How in the heck can you do that when the inserts on the vaccines were totally blank no ingredients, no risks, no benefits blank.
Speaker 1:It's wrong. It's wrong, it shouldn't be.
Speaker 2:No pharmaceutical should be allowed to be distributed without a careful assessment of the risks and benefits written in a way that the average person can understand because as you know, some of these things are written in a way that I can't understand. Look, my grandson just graduated Columbia.
Speaker 4:Medical School I can brag a little and proud he was first in his class and he got three awards at graduation Highest grades okay.
Speaker 1:Third was COVID. He did work on COVID, but the middle one was most compassionate and that's the one that I was proudest of and I've had long discussions with him about what happened during COVID and. I think the one thing we can all agree upon is that now that we have some time to reflect on it, all of your questions need to be answered. Hello, Mr.
Speaker 6:Dershowitz, hi Back when you were a professor at Harvard Law what do you remember most about your two most famous students, Obama and Ted Cruz?
Speaker 1:Well, Ted Cruz was far the more interesting student because, you know, in my 50 years of teaching at Harvard, I never expressed an opinion on anything political. I would always be the devil's advocate.
Speaker 2:I would teach students not what to think, but how to think, and so I was always taking positions contrary to my real positions.
Speaker 4:For example, I am an opponent of the death penalty, but in my class, I would make the strongest possible arguments for the death penalty.
Speaker 1:When Cruz came along, I no longer had to be the devil's advocate because, he was the devil himself.
Speaker 2:He came into the class with his right hand raised, never put it down the entire semester.
Speaker 1:The students were so upset at him that they created a game called Cruise Bingo. They would give out cards to the students.
Speaker 2:He didn't know about this and whenever he said a particular word that he would always say like judicial restraint or originalism, they would mark off their card.
Speaker 4:And when the first person got bingoingo, he had to get up and ask a question and finally we all caught on to it.
Speaker 1:We made them, we made them stop in. Obama's case.
Speaker 2:Carolyn and I were invited to the White House a number of times when Obama was president particularly when Truman Perez got the Medal of Freedom and so there we were in the White House, and he comes over to me and says I don't know why I invited you to my house.
Speaker 1:You didn't let me in your class twice. You kept me out and I had to explain to him it was a computer not me that kept him out.
Speaker 4:I knew him fairly well in school because his mentor was my closest friend, charles Ogletree, who shared an office suite with me, and so this young guy with a cigarette always dangling out of his mouth, wearing a leather jacket, called himself Barry, was always sitting outside of our office.
Speaker 1:And I have to tell you there's only one vote. I regret having made I started voting when I voted for John Kennedy in 1960.
Speaker 5:But my second vote for Obama is a vote I regret.
Speaker 4:I should not have voted for him. The second time.
Speaker 2:He lied to me.
Speaker 1:He looked me in the eye. He told me that they would never allow.
Speaker 2:Iran to develop nuclear weapons and that he had Israel's back. I didn't realize he meant to paint the target on it. So my relationship with Obama has completely ended and I'm proud of that, not proud of the fact that I voted for him the second time.
Speaker 4:Professor, something about you I don't understand.
Speaker 8:You're a Democrat, but if you look at, the Democratic Party going all the way back to Andrew Jackson. They were pro-slavery. The Republican Party was started as the anti-slavery.
Speaker 1:I would have been a Republican with Jim Lincoln's time, believe me. So if you look at, the Democratic Party today.
Speaker 4:Hamas and anti-Israel, anti-semitic. How can you still?
Speaker 1:be a Democrat? Well, I'm not sure. I am.
Speaker 4:I'm not sure that.
Speaker 1:I'm committed to a particular party. Look, both parties have done some terrible things and both parties have done wonderful things.
Speaker 4:I grew up in the age of.
Speaker 1:Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Harry Truman. My family were all Democrats, but I really like.
Speaker 4:I like Ronald Reagan very much and it's another vote I regret.
Speaker 1:I think I should have voted for Reagan over Carter that was a mistake, but Reagan won, so it didn't much matter. You know I don't vote party, I vote individuals, and there are many Republicans. I would clearly vote for over Democrats and if I were living in Great Britain, I would vote straight line conservative.
Speaker 6:What's the difference?
Speaker 1:The difference is that in Great Britain the Conservative Party is conservative on foreign policy and fiscal, but they are not social conservatives. They don't have views on abortion, birth control, gay rights, separation of church and state Look. I don't like the fact that Republican governors are requiring teaching in Oklahoma the Bible, the Christian Bible or the Jewish?
Speaker 4:Bible it wouldn't matter to me which one it was or posting the Ten.
Speaker 1:Commandments.
Speaker 4:I could vote Republican but not on some of these issues of See, I'm a libertarian.
Speaker 1:I don't want the government in my bedroom. I don't want the government on my deathbed. I don't want the government telling me things that.
Speaker 2:I should have the right to decide, and I think the Democrats are slightly better on that than the Republicans, although the Republicans are slightly better on that than the Republicans, although the Republicans are considerably better on a lot of other issues, which is why I am not going to decide who I'm voting for until October. I can tell you this.
Speaker 1:My wife will videotape who I vote for. How do I know that? Because in the 2020 election we were away from. We vote in Florida, where it counts. We were in New York. It was early November. We don't get to.
Speaker 2:Florida usually until mid-November, and so we got an absentee ballot.
Speaker 1:My wife gave it to me and said vote. I said, sure, I'll vote, and she stood over me. I said, well, I'll vote, no, no, no, I'm going to watch you vote. I I'll vote, no, no, no, I'm going to watch you vote. I don't trust you. You might vote for Trump. I said, no, I'm going to vote for Biden.
Speaker 3:She takes out her camera and she says all right vote.
Speaker 1:And she photographs me, videotapes me voting for Biden, so she could tell all of her friends that she saw me vote for Biden.
Speaker 4:Don't know who I'm going to vote for this time.
Speaker 1:Don't know who's going to be running this time. You may have seen already there's a big movement based on tonight's debate within the Democratic Party to maybe substitute out somebody for Biden and I'm very fearful that the Democrats could appoint somebody. Way to the left of.
Speaker 2:Biden, which would seal my voting against the Democrats, but they could also nominate somebody, and it also matters who- Trump nominates.
Speaker 1:I think Trump is about to make a terrible mistake.
Speaker 4:Trump should be, should do what John Kennedy did when he ran Hold his nose. Kennedy hated Lyndon Johnson, bobby Kennedy hated Lyndon Johnson.
Speaker 2:But they knew that without Texas and without some of the other, southern states he couldn't win, and so he appointed Johnson to be the vice president, immediately put Johnson in a closet, had nothing to do with the administration until the tragic death. And I think that Trump, if he wants to be assured of his victory should appoint somebody who maybe isn't loyal to him, maybe he doesn't like and doesn't like him, maybe has said some nasty things about him which includes a lot of Republicans but somebody who will help him win the election, and I'm afraid he's not going to do that.
Speaker 4:I'm afraid he's going to appoint a clone who is loyal and I can just tell you one story about that. So, I argued the case for Trump in front of the United States Senate.
Speaker 6:I think I did a good job.
Speaker 1:My wife was with me, we were leaving.
Speaker 2:Phone call comes in the next day. It's from the president and Carolyn says oh, it's so nice. He's going to thank you. And Trump gets on the phone and says Alan, I hope you're going to thank me for making you famous.
Speaker 1:So that's Donald Trump Love him or hate him, but if he wants to be the next president he should be appointing somebody. I'm not going to get into specifics, but somebody more like Nikki Haley than like another white male senator or governor who brings nothing to the ticket at all.
Speaker 2:Let's see if he does it. It would be interesting.
Speaker 1:Tonight's debate may have had an influence on that, because he may believe that tonight's debate puts him over the top and therefore he should be able to pick somebody who he can be compatible with We'll wait and see. Let's do one more question and then, who else, professor, yeah, we often assume that other democracies like Israel value the same constitutional freedoms that we enjoy in the United States.
Speaker 6:How does Israel actually compare with the US?
Speaker 2:For example, the Fourth Amendment, protection against civil asset forfeiture. Well, every country is different, and when Eastern.
Speaker 4:European countries were freed of communism. I played a role in that. I worked on that very hard.
Speaker 2:I got requests from several of the Eastern European countries to help them draft constitutions based on the American Constitution.
Speaker 4:And.
Speaker 1:I declined all of their requests. I said you have to write a constitution based on your own values. If you want to consult with me on a clause here and there, avoiding some of the mistakes we've made.
Speaker 2:For example, our Fourth Amendment is incomprehensible. Nobody can understand really what it means.
Speaker 6:A first-year law student can do a better job in clarifying exactly
Speaker 4:what is intended to be covered and what relationship? The.
Speaker 1:Warren. Clause has to the probable cause, all of that.
Speaker 2:But countries have to have constitutions based on their indigenous and inherent values, For example. I don't know the Constitution of Alaska, but I bet you it's different than the.
Speaker 6:Constitution of some other states. It should be.
Speaker 2:Take, for example, the Second Amendment. We were just talking to Kelly on the way in and she was explaining how different the Second Amendment is. In Alaska, alaska, people hunt for food and need guns to protect themselves in a variety of ways.
Speaker 1:Alaska today is much more like, probably the colonial period in America, when the Second.
Speaker 2:Amendment was drafted than the Bronx is. And there are different rules for different groups. Tonight President. Trump emphasized how the state should be deciding issues of abortion. I think states should also be deciding issues of guns.
Speaker 4:I think there should be a lot of flexibility and differences between how Alaska handles guns and how Manhattan handles guns.
Speaker 1:So you know, there are very great cultural differences. Israel, of course, has no written constitution because it can't resolve the basic issues of separation of religion and state, the relationship between the Arab and Palestinian population and the Jewish population Very hard issues. There's constitutional law there. The Supreme Court of Israel just ruled two days ago that it would be improper for very orthodox Jews not to be subject to the draft. And I think that's widely accepted within.
Speaker 2:Israel so. But they're not going to have. It's not going to be easy for them to have a written constitution.
Speaker 1:It's very hard for a country to have a written constitution, except in the beginning. We were able to have a written constitution because we compromised.
Speaker 2:If you had to make an issue, resolve the issue of slavery, we never would have had a constitution.
Speaker 4:Remember what happened.
Speaker 1:The Constitution said for the next 20 years you can import slaves, but after 20 years you have to stop importing slaves, but you can still have them and sell them and buy them, it took a civil war and the 13th, 14th and 15th.
Speaker 6:Amendment to resolve that issue.
Speaker 2:By the way, that issue would have been resolved without a civil war.
Speaker 1:The cotton gin. The nature of the changing economy would have made the slave ownership as a means of running the economy of the. South less viable over the years it would have taken a long time and the constitutional amendments were very very important, and so a constitution as John. Marshall said is a reflection of the values of a given society at a given time which is why it's hard to accept fully the approach to the Constitution which is now being used.
Speaker 1:That says you have to look back to see what the framers would have thought about, what artificial intelligence, what the framers would have thought about vaccines Well, maybe they had some insight in vaccines based on the Washington letters.
Speaker 2:But there are a range of issues that was just incomprehensible.
Speaker 1:And by the way, we write laws today, there are young kids here today, kelly's kids, these wonderful young boys and girls. By the time you're my age everything will be different and nobody can imagine the differences because every new invention begets new inventions.
Speaker 2:And that's why a constitution has to have.
Speaker 1:A some flexibility in its interpretation and B an amending process that's realistic to allow adaptation, as again Marshall said it's a constitution we are expounding designed to live through the ages.
Speaker 6:Ours is the longest serving constitution designed to live through the ages.
Speaker 1:Ours is the longest serving constitution in the history of the world 1793 to today we have a constitution with only 25 amendments.
Speaker 2:It's remarkable how enduring it's been and how we are the model for so many other countries' constitutions, but we have to preserve it and we have to value it, and that's a message to both sides of the political spectrum, neither Republicans nor Democrats are doing enough to value our constitutional heritage.
Speaker 1:I just want to make one final word.
Speaker 2:We've only been here a week or so, but I have to tell you there's a lot below our 48 to learn from.
Speaker 1:Alaska.
Speaker 2:There's an enormous amount.
Speaker 1:I have found much greater tolerance. Yes, you're a divided state, just like every state is divided, but people talk to each other to a greater extent. Maybe it's because you each have a square mile to yourselves, but this is a wonderful wonderful place. My wife and I are going to bring back such incredibly fantastic memories not only about the food which is beyond belief, but about mostly the people and the institutions.
Speaker 1:And thank you so much, kelly for inviting me, and I speak for my wife for inviting both of us to share with you our views about so many issues and we will be thinking about what I've learned from you tonight for many, many months to come.
Speaker 2:Thank you and I hope to come back.
Speaker 10:Thank you, thank you. Thank you. You are always welcome back, Professor Dershowitz.
Speaker 3:We want to give you an opportunity to just kind of summarize your thoughts for the evening in two or three minutes. To Alaskans Like, what are your takeaways for us for tonight in two or three?
Speaker 1:minutes to Alaskans. What are your takeaways for us?
Speaker 3:for tonight.
Speaker 1:My takeaways is that I think everybody in this room supports basic freedom, basic liberty. I think this is a state that values liberty, that values independence, that values intellectual exchange. I think that's the most important takeaway I have.
Speaker 2:As you said we don't agree about everything and what a boring place it would be if we agreed about everything and the friendship, the friendliness of the people.
Speaker 4:That, to me, is the great takeaway, and just the wonders of nature that you see outside.
Speaker 1:I mean, we took the train today from Seward here. I just couldn't believe.
Speaker 2:Mountain after mountain and glacier after glacier and moose after moose and just amazing what you have here. Seward was a genius and the Russians were a bunch of damn fools. So again thank you. An epic finale for sure.
Speaker 3:AFP. We want to do the drawing for your shirt, Stephanie. Okay, Professor, you've got the lucky draw. There's five, right? Yes, the number is 94-24-67. 94-24-67. 94-24-67.
Speaker 1:By the way, I am not the only Dershowitz who does this? My son is Deputy General Counsel of the National Basketball Association and Chief Counsel of the Women's National Basketball Association, and he's the one every year who pulls the ball out to determine who gets which picks, and so that's a little bit more public than what we do here today.
Speaker 3:But we're honest brokers, so next time we see the draft picks we'll know Okay, next we'll know.
Speaker 1:Okay, next. Okay, this one is 94-24-64. Woohoo, okay, this next one is 94-24-81. Woo-hoo Go Walt. Go Walt 94-24-74.
Speaker 3:Lucky section over here. Thank you.
Speaker 2:Last one.
Speaker 3:Okay, the finale. 94-24-hoo, woo-hoo. Thank you so much, americans for Prosperity.
Speaker 4:And thank you, Professor Dershowitz, for donating a signed book tonight.
Speaker 3:War on Woke.
Speaker 2:I think these are going for $300 online, so I figured I would just ask him to sign one when he got here and we would like to auction this off tonight. I'm going to need some help from eyes in the audience If people discreetly raise their hands.
Speaker 3:I'd like to see them. So let's start this opening bid at $50.
Speaker 4:And remember part of the proceeds are going to go to help emergency support services in Israel. Ryan, I'm acknowledging your bid.
Speaker 2:Okay well we got 50 in the back. Hold on. I want to talk about this organization. There's an organization called.
Speaker 3:Genesis 123 that's on the ground in Israel. They help provide ambulances, blood transfusions and now they're helping to rebuild the houses that were bombed by Hamas on the October 7th terrorist attacks so that's what we're going to put money towards supporting 500.
Speaker 2:Does anyone want to beat Representative Allard for?
Speaker 3:$500 for a book. 600. Michael Robbins, I'm going to be writing a lot more books after this, my.
Speaker 2:God.
Speaker 3:That's amazing, and Mike is at eight, nine, a grand, hmm, maybe you want to personalize these in the back.
Speaker 2:What's that? I'll write a whole new chapter.
Speaker 3:Okay, how about we do two books, or three books One, two, three for a thousand Thousand each. That's what I'm saying. Does that work? Okay? Mike says he's out for that. Mike Baker, okay, mike.
Speaker 2:Robbins, do you want to help us?
Speaker 3:out.
Speaker 1:Love the enthusiasm.
Speaker 3:Guys, let's give them a round of applause. Thank you, it's a very popular book. Thank you, you're very well loved here in. Alaska. Okay we have a really, really, really special delivery. We reached out and said hey, President Trump, for those who don't know, I happen to chair Trump's campaign here in Alaska, Little secret and I think that he was really grateful that you represented him.
Speaker 4:He didn't express it on behalf of President Trump. I'm sorry. We are very grateful for your representation of President Trump and tonight's the debate and he knew Professor Dershowitz was going to be here and so he sent a signed picture for us.
Speaker 3:Yes, carolyn, I know that you want this in your house. I was reading your body language all night With best wishes. Originally signed. This is not a fake signature.
Speaker 4:This is an original sign, donald J.
Speaker 3:Trump, the next president of the United States of America, donald J Trump, the next president of the United States of America, and a client of Professor Gershwitz, and so you can hold it up. Yeah, we're auctioning this off, yeah, and also you can show it to the people behind you, because they want to see it too. So starting bid $100.
Speaker 3:$200. Thank you, they want to see it too. So starting bid $100. $200. Thank you, it's so good to see you. $300. Thank you, ryan. Four who said four, ah, five, six and again proceeds are going to go to help people in Israel. Any else Seven? Thank you, josh. Eight from Paul Ryan no Going once, going twice this side of the room.
Speaker 1:It has to be more than you paid for my book.
Speaker 2:Otherwise Trump will be very upset.
Speaker 1:We will get a call, so you've got to get it over a thousand.
Speaker 3:We will get a call.
Speaker 2:Gloria.
Speaker 3:Alright, we got a thousand. Does anyone want to top that by $5? No, she says no, she calls it. She's got the picture. It's closed. Okay, thank you, do it after.
Speaker 4:All right, and then?
Speaker 3:the last one, which is the big one, let's put the Trump the safari hunt photo up. Thank you, logan the if you need a handout on this, that you need to see all the terms, conditions and rules please put your hand up and our volunteers will run you the handout at the beginning this is a 10-day south africa hunt for four, meaning four people will go to south africa and hunt.
Speaker 4:It includes $1,500 trophy credit, lodgingging and laundry, meals and drinks, airport transfers, the trophy care, the guide service the 15% value-added tax and the things that aren't included add up to a couple hundred dollars per person.
Speaker 3:The donation value is $20,000. The dates are already reserved for you, but you can talk to them about moving the dates for next year, so the dates are for May 1st through 12th 2025, which means you're missing.
Speaker 2:Breakup.
Speaker 3:You're welcome.
Speaker 2:You're welcome.
Speaker 4:And again, the portion of the proceeds are going to go to benefit these emergency support services in Israel.
Speaker 3:We'll start the bid at $1,500, which means it's $400 a person. Anyone want to go to Africa? You do Awesome, what's that? $2,000. $3,000. It's a pretty cheap Africa trip. Anyone else? $4,000. $5,000. $5,000. You can literally give this to a friend, each for like $1,000, right? $5,000? $6,000. Okay, okay, we have six. Do you want seven? Okay, so we're at six. Mr Zellner is six. Is it going to go that cheap? That's awesome. Anyone else? 6,500. Okay, mr Zellner. Seven and Mike Baker wants to do 10. What I thought I saw your hand go up. That's not. It was Jamie Allard. Oh, I, no, it wasn't, it was. I thought it was you. Seven, all right. Anyone not want to go higher than seven? Did you want to go higher than seven?
Speaker 10:I think you'll shoot me if I do.
Speaker 3:Yeah, that's not the hunt we were looking for, mr.
Speaker 2:Zellner, we all want to say thank you for benefiting emergency support services in Israel.
Speaker 3:Can you bring him the forms? Thanks, Heather. Okay, this concludes our evening tonight.
Speaker 2:Let's give Mr Dershowitz a round of applause.
Speaker 3:Thank you so much, yes, thank you so much. Yes, will you?
Speaker 2:please give us a moment to take Mr Dershowitz backstage, and then we will be done.
Speaker 3:Please visit our sponsors and we're so grateful to have you. Thank you so much for coming.
Speaker 2:Thank you so much, everybody, and we're really grateful that we're going to be able to give a portion of this to Israel.
Speaker 10:This is going to make a big difference for them, so thank you.
