Cambridge, Mass.



Alexander Cockburn realizes that, as one columnist characterized him,

"as an accuser, Joe McCarthy was more responsible." So he has invoked

a purported neutral academic expert to lend credence to his

preposterous plagiarism charge ["Beat the Devil," Oct. 13; "Letters,"

Oct. 27]. It turns out, however, that his "expert" is as biased,

irresponsible and wrong as he is. Sayres Rudy is not a "professor."

So far as I can determine, he has no PhD. He has no permanent

teaching job. He is an academic vagabond with little experience and

even less knowledge about academic disciplinary matters. He is also,

not coincidentally, an ideological soul mate of Cockburn on Israel,

having signed petitions that accuse Israel but not Palestinian

terrorist organizations of war crimes. I have read the disciplinary

and plagiarism codes that he cites and cannot find anything even

close to what Cockburn has falsely accused me of doing. More

important, Harvard Law School’s extremely demanding definition of

plagiarism makes it clear that what I did was entirely proper.

Moreover, I did it completely in the open. In the galley proofs that

were sent to hundreds of reviewers, I included an instruction to my

research assistant to cite several sources I came upon in Joan

Peters’s book. I also instructed my research staff to check these

sources against the original. The experts I consulted-real experts,

with vast experience and no ideological ax to grind-know of no case

in which a student or faculty member was ever disciplined for doing

what I did. I challenge Prof. Rudy to come up with a single case in

which he participated at the universities he mentions that resulted

in any kind of discipline for a student or professor who cited

original rather than secondary sources for a handful of quotations

(out of hundreds) that he or she originally found in a secondary

source with whose conclusions he disagrees, checked them against the

originals and then cited the originals. Although the names of

students are generally kept confidential, the charges are often made

public so that students can learn from the "common law." He will be

unable to do so, because what I did was absolutely proper and

routine. And he knows it. His claim that he can say "unequivocally"

that any student who did what I did would be disciplined for

plagiarism is a deliberate lie made out of whole cloth to serve his

ideological agenda. Like Cockburn, he doesn’t like the substance of

my book and so has joined forces with those seeking to deligitimize

it with false charges. This is a form of literary McCarthyism of

which he should be ashamed, even if Cockburn is shameless.



Alan Dershowitz







Cockburn Replies

New York City



First let me give the floor to Sayres Rudy: "Alan Dershowitz thinks

I’m too inexperienced to assess his plagiarism because I’m not a

professor but a vagabond. When I finish my dissertation this year, I

will have three advanced degrees: Johns Hopkins, SAIS (MA 1990),

Columbia (MA 1996; PhD 2004). How many does Dershowitz have? What he

calls vagabondage I call teaching. Since 1993 I’ve taught political

science at Columbia, Amherst and Mount Holyoke, and political

philosophy at Harvard (six years). I served on and chaired Davidson

College’s Honor Council (1983-86), whose hearings are confidential

and outcomes sealed. At Davidson as elsewhere, Dershowitz’s

technique-citing unchecked sources in any given footnote as his own

research findings when they’re in fact taken from uncited sources-is

an honor code violation: either plagiarism or, worse, stealing.

Dershowitz also implies that I’m politically motivated. I do deplore

inhumane and intellectually absurd apologias for political

domination. But whether in defense of Saudi, Palestinian Authority

or-as in this case-Zionist criminality, Dershowitz’s tactics

constitute plagiarism. If not, why would he use me as a red herring

rather than answer Alexander Cockburn’s (and Norman Finkelstein’s)

charges directly?"

On the plagiarism charges Dershowitz is dead in the water. We now

have the "smoking gun" proof that he copied Peters’s sources without

checking them. A correspondent has sent Finkelstein the advance

uncorrected proofs of D’s book. Many of the footnotes are not yet

filled in, and instructions are left for D’s research assistants on

how to complete the text. Here’s footnote 19 on p. 13: "Holly Beth:

cite sources on pp. 160, 485, 486, fns 141-145." Notice the wording:

D doesn’t say "check" sources on pp.__; he says "cite" sources on

pp.__. All the page references are to Peters’s book citations, which

correspond to those in D’s book. Holly Beth is one of his research

assistants, acknowledged in the final version of the text. Dershowitz

knows the smoking gun has surfaced, hence the hastily inserted

bluster on the matter in this latest letter.

McCarthy? In his ghastly book D claims that the International

Solidarity Movement are supporters of terrorism; that Rachel Corrie

"threw herself" in front of the oncoming Israeli bulldozer; that

female Palestinian suicide bombers were raped by "terrorist

operatives"; that an "independent investigation" proved that a

Palestinian killed during torture by Israel died from unrelated

causes; that Israel doesn’t currently torture Palestinian detainees;

that the Marines in Beirut 1983 were killed by "Palestinian

terrorists"; that no Palestinian was deliberately killed during

Operation Defensive Shield; and on and on. As Finkelstein remarks,

it’s simply not possible to address the "substance" of D’s "book,"

because the book lacks substance. It’s a flat-out fraud, from the

author’s name forward. Finkelstein promises to demonstrate this in a

forthcoming book, from the New Press, titled Letters to an Old

Shyster: How Professor Alan Dershowitz Concocted a Ludicrous Hoax and

Why Harvard University Should Expel Him for It. Dershowitz should be

kicked out of his Felix Frankfurter chair for being a plagiarist, and

then he should sue himself for incompetency of counsel.



Alexander Cockburn