“Dershowitz cites the quote as appearing on the same pages that Peters’s [book] said they appeared on, which are 349, 366, 375, 441 and, 442,” he said. “But Dershowitz cites the quotation to the newest 1996 edition, where the quote appears on pages 485, 508 and 520. He didn’t even bother to check the page numbers.”
Dershowitz responded to this by saying that “the rule in my office is that we check against the original. My research assistant checked against the original, the words are correct, and I don’t know about the rest.”
Dershowitz said he has spoken with HLS Dean Elena Kagan about the accusations and has sent University President Lawrence H. Summers memos about the accusations and his defense.
Dershowitz said he worried that Finkelstein was sending “an insidious message that if you dare to write a pro-Israel book, you risk being called a plagiarist...or having your integrity attacked. This could easily frighten someone with tenure away, but in this case, they picked the wrong person. I have the resources to fight back.”
Finkelstein, who is an assistant professor of political science at DePaul University in Chicago, has gained some national attention for his accusations.
The October edition of The Nation included a column by Alexander Cockburn, entitled “Alan Dershowitz, Plagiarist.”
In the column, Cockburn suggests that Dershowitz is not only a plagiarist, but also a hypocrite, accusing others of a “manufacturing of false anti-history.”
“I don’t make these charges cavalierly,” Finkelstein said. “But I feel very strongly in this case. And it is a disgrace of a book—if this book was made not out of paper but out of cloth, I wouldn’t even use it as a shmatte [rag].”
Dershowitz, however, remains confident about the merits of his manuscript.
When he spoke on MSNBC’s radio earlier this month, he pledged $10,000 to the Palestinian Liberation Organization if someone could “find a historical fact in my book that [one] can prove false.”
Finkelstein attempted to place an advertisement in The Crimson last week with a chart comparing Dershowitz’s quotations to those that appeared in Peters’ book, but The Crimson has not yet run the ad.
The newspaper has requested that several changes be made before the advertisement run, Crimson president Amit R. Paley said last night. According to Paley, Finkelstein is considering the modifications.
“When the Nation was concerned about putting the word ‘plagiarism’ in their headline, they sent my charts to their lawyer, and the lawyer said to go with the title,” Finkelstein said.
Finkelstein said that if The Crimson did not publish his first advertisement, he would take out a full-page ad challenging Dershowitz to a debate at Harvard on the merits of his book.
“I was waiting for The Crimson to publish this ad before I brought up the debate, so students could decide for themselves if this is plagiarism or scandalous scholarship or both,” Finkelstein said.
“If they don’t run it, they are protecting a professor…He is using Harvard’s name to purvey a hoax—he is shaming his institution.”
—Staff writer Lauren A.E. Schuker can be reached at schuker@fas.harvard.edu.