HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_017409.jpg

4.2.12
WC: 191694

“It was all done with little publicity and little fanfare, and we gave only two days for registering,” he said.

The objective of the course, Professor Dershowitz said, would be “to assess the role of the lawyer, as professional and citizen, in both the domestic and foreign aspects of the conflict.” He said the course would explore “the relevance of law to this country’s involvement in Vietnam.”⁹⁶

Time Magazine began its story this way:

“Viet Nam is the most significant social, political and legal issue of the day,” said Harvard Law Professor Alan Dershowitz last week. “And a law school should be concerned with the issues of the day,” Dershowitz had just finished giving the first class in a brand-new, ten-week Harvard course entitled “The Role of the Law and the Lawyer in the Viet Nam Conflict.” It has no exam or grades, offers no credit, and involves a good deal of reading over and above the students’ already heavy regular work load. But it has a record enrollment of more than 400—one-quarter of the student body—and is one of the most popular courses in the 150-year history of the school.
The course will cover such questions as the international-law aspects of the war, the division of war-making responsibility between the President and Congress, free speech and dissent, the draft and the rights of an inductee, and the status of a conscientious objector to a specific war.

Lawyers who were contemplating legal action against the war sat in on the class and several faculty members, who were not involved in the teaching, attended as well. I received dozens of requests for copies of the materials from professors at other schools who wanted to offer the course to their students. For me, it was the beginning of a practice that I have followed throughout my teaching career: offering courses about highly relevant contemporaneous issues that respond to interesting teaching moments. Over the half-century of my teaching at Harvard Law School, I have offered a new course just about every year. Many of them have dealt with pressing issues of human rights generated by the conflicts of the day.

In addition to teaching courses I wrote article on human rights and brought lawsuits challenging human rights abuses. And I participated in political campaigns to end apartheid, the War in Vietnam and other human wrongs. My early work on human rights won me a coveted Guggenheim fellowship and other honors. It also earned me the media title “Global Watchdog.”⁹⁷ In an article by that name, the reporter interviewed me about my definition of human rights:

“I’m less concerned with causes than I am with concepts of equality, fairness, due process, civil liberties, and free speech...”

⁹⁶ Sunday New York Times, February 18, 1968.
⁹⁷ Harvard Law School Bulletin, Summer 1978

322

HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_017409