The press release below trumpeting the Alan Dershowitz papers went out from Brooklyn College yesterday. Much talk of “celebrities,” including Glenn Close! Dershowitz is a professor at Harvard. Harvard has Brandeis’s papers. Benjamin Cardozo’s. Felix Frankfurter’s. Raoul Berger’s. What gives? Maybe too many celebrities? (Something else: Jeffrey Toobin is promoting the event. Is he a Zionist? Jeff, talk to me; has anti-Semitism curbed your career? Do you feel unsafe in the United States?)
REQUEST FOR COVERAGE
Alan M. Dershowitz ’59 Papers finally processed and available to Researchers at Brooklyn College after titanic labor of love Collection Exhibit until January 3, 2012
Brooklyn, November 11, 2011— The Brooklyn College Library is pleased to announce the official opening and presentation of the special document collection of famed attorney, author, and Harvard Law Professor Alan Dershowitz ’59. An exclusive event in honor of Mr. Dershowitz will take place at the college’s Woody Tanger Auditorium on Monday, November 14, at 4 pm. The event will also mark the start of the exhibit, “In my own defense: The Papers of Alan M. Dershowitz,” a selection of the Dershowitz collection which will be on view until January 3, 2012.
Known for keeping innumerable records documenting his career activities, Dershowtiz’s collection includes papers from his childhood, case files and correspondence with his clients (some still subject to client-attorney privilege and therefore private), as well as letters from such celebrities as Senator Robert F. Kennedy, Chief Justice Warren Burger, Governor Eliot Spitzer, President Bill Clinton, among others.
After nearly a decade of classifying and preserving the 1,000 boxes that Dershowitz originally donated to his alma mater, the Library’s archivists have filled 1,841 document totaling 1,250-cubic-feet. The documents will be made available to researchers. Another fifty boxes are waiting to be cataloged [sic], and additional documents are delivered periodically.
Alan Dershowitz is perhaps the most iconic legal scholar of his generation. He has published hundreds of articles in some of the world’s most esteemed publications, he is a sought-after legal commentator for news organizations around the world, and he has authored more than 30 fiction and non-fiction works on a broad range of topics. Newsweek magazine has called him “…one of America’s most distinguished defenders of individual rights.”
A native of Brooklyn, Dershowitz gained notoriety for winning the release of Claus von Bulow, a man accused of overmedicating his diabetic wife, Martha Sharp Crawford, heiress to the fortune of utilities magnate George Crawford. In 1985 he penned a book about the case titled Reversal of Fortune, which was adapted into a movie of the same title with Glenn Close and Jeremy Irons, who won the Oscar for Best Actor in 1990.
The exhibit includes manuscripts from some of Dershowitz’s books; a touch-screen kiosk with video interviews covering his childhood in Brooklyn, his experiences at Brooklyn College, his multiple appearances on television; and some of the hate mail Dershowitz has received over the decades, which he admits to wearing as a badge of honor.
CNN contributor and New Yorker magazine legal reporter Jeffrey Toobin, a student of Dershowitz at Harvard Law, will speak at the event.
This is a fun story, but my guess is that Dershowitz offered his papers to Brooklyn; he was an undergrad there. And the blunt truth is that Dershowitz is little more than a loudmouth, an outstanding criminal defense attorney, and an unalloyed pro-Israel bigot. I’ve never seen any suggestion that he is considered much of a legal scholar. There is little or nothing to give his papers lasting scholarly interest, I suspect, because there is little of lasting scholarly interest about the man.
“Newsweek magazine has called him ‘…one of America’s most distinguished defenders of individual rights.'”
LMAO. Unless those “individuals” stand in the way of the Chosen People. He’s all for individual rights in the USA, where his people are a minority. But when the Jews are the majority (well, of the power-holders, anyway), his concern for individual rights (of the minorities there) suddenly, and just so happens to disappear!!!
history will remember him as a self-hating, warmongering jewish israel-firster
Inconsequential puppet for the anti-justice cabal.
1,841 document totaling 1,250-cubic-feet
An archive’s size is expressed in length, not volume. But probably Dershowitz’s production is sewage based. Of course, bigmouth is measured in cubics.
And by the way, has he payed Finkelstein as promised for his wrong quote?