Chomsky and Dershowitz

Download or read book Chomsky and Dershowitz written by Howard Friel and published by Interlink Publishing. This book was released on 2013-09-21 with total page 472 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Through the lens of a careful assessment of the political views of MIT’s Noam Chomsky and Harvard’s Alan Dershowitz—the two protagonists of a Cambridge-based feud over the past forty years—author Howard Friel chronicles an American intellectual history from the U.S. war in Vietnam in the 1960s to the contemporary debate about the Israel-Palestine conflict. Major findings reveal the consistency of Chomsky’s principled support of international law, human rights, and civil liberties, and a reversal by Dershowitz from support in the 1960s to opposition of those legal standards today. Friel’s volume argues that a Chomskyan adherence by the United States to international law and human rights would reduce the threat of terrorism and preserve civil liberties, that the Dershowitz-backed war on terrorism increases the threat of terrorism and undermines civil liberties, and that the incremental but steady transition toward a preventive state threatens the permanent suspension of civil liberties in the United States.