Students Should Warn Dershowitz

Each working day, a great many millions of viewers, both national and international, tune in to view the trial of O.J. Simpson. Harvard Law School has become, like it or not, a de facto participant in this affair. Via the laptop computer of Robert Shapiro, Simpson's lead defense attorney, the Constitutional expertise of Alan Dershowitz is made available on a moment-to-moment, blow-by-blow basis.

Unquestionably, the students of Harvard may maintain that they have no right to indicate in one way or another how one of the University's legal scholars shall sell his wares in the commercial, public arena. Advocates of the First Amendment may well rest on this argument, which is not to be taken lightly. But students should not feel prevented from speaking out about this involvement.

Dershowitz, who has borrowed Harvard's prestige to lend weight to a variety of moral and social causes, some meritorious and some not, has no moral basis for claiming exemption. As a paid member of the defense, he has paraded himself through the media as a commentator. It occurs to me that even Harvard may be well-served by a gadfly, if that is what it takes to inform it that its acquiescence in this matter makes it an amicus curiae of the legal team which is helping to dismantle the fundamental dignity of our institutions of law and order.

By now, it has become clear what the defense strategy is. Its interest is not the investigation of racial bias, but the effective use of the race card as a gag and a restraint on public opinion no less than on public officials. The true strategy, it is now apparent, is to simply demolish public support for the prosecution by destroying the reputations of each and every individual police officer brought before the court. Breaking legal rules with a sense of impunity and seeking to humiliate public opinion into acquiescence is not a very lofty standard for the American institution of due process. Rather than wait for a fait accompli and the hand-wringing reserved to the whiners, perhaps the students of Harvard will show some moral leadership in this matter by informing Professor Dershowitz that he is free to sell his wares any way he chooses, so long as he keeps Harvard out of it. Robert Roecklin   Graduate School of Rutgers University