Alan Dershowitz on Unrest in LA, Trump-Harvard Clash, and New Book ‘The Preventive State’

American Thought Leaders

The Epoch Times

Government, News, Politics

4.9 • 1.1K Ratings

🗓️ 15 June 2025

⏱️ 69 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Say we had credible intelligence about an impending terrorist attack or major acts of violence, what actions are justifiable to prevent these crimes from occurring? How do we balance the urgency of preventing harm, with the importance of safeguarding civil liberties?

“We have to make trade-offs all the time, and there’s no jurisprudence to that trade-off. We live in the preventive state,” says Alan Dershowitz, professor emeritus at Harvard Law School. “We are moving more and more toward replacing deterrence and reaction with prevention.”

He is the author of the new book, “The Preventive State: The Challenge of Preventing Serious Harms While Preserving Essential Liberties.”

Should someone charged—but not convicted—with a serious crime be denied bail to potentially prevent further crimes? Should governments be able to compel inoculations in a scenario where that could actually prevent deadly contagion? And notably, a few days after this interview was filmed, Israel launched preemptive strikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities. When is such preventive military action warranted?

In this episode, we dive into the legal framework laid out in his new book—which he describes as the most important work he’s ever written—and get his insights into the debate around deploying the National Guard in Los Angeles, the Trump administration’s clash with Harvard University, the dilemma of tackling Chinese espionage on college campuses, and the growing erosion of free speech protections in Europe.

Views expressed in this video are opinions of the host and the guest, and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.

Transcript

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0:00.0	We live in the preventive state, we are moving more and more toward replacing deterrence and reaction with prevention.
0:08.3	Nuclear proliferation, diseases, terrorism, so many things are horrible.
0:13.6	Yet our ability to predict and prevent these horrors from occurring is greater than it's ever been.
0:19.8	In this episode, I'm sitting down with Alan Dershowitz, Professor Emeritus at Harvard Law School,
0:25.2	an author of numerous books, including most recently, The Preventive State,
0:29.5	The Challenge of Preventing Serious Harms while Preserving Essential Liberties.
0:33.9	Prevention has become kind of the cover for everything we do good and bad, and we don't have the mechanism yet for distinguishing the good from the bad and balancing the inevitable bad that we know we're going to get against the hope for good.
0:48.3	Should someone charged with a crime be denied bail to potentially prevent further crimes? Should governments be able to compel inoculations if that could actually prevent deadly contagions?
0:59.0	And notably, a few days after this interview was filmed, Israel launched preemptive strikes on Iran's nuclear facilities.
1:06.0	When is such preventive military action warranted?
1:09.0	This is the most important book I have ever written.
1:11.7	Yet, the New York Times will refuse to review this book.
1:15.1	The Harvard Law School has refused to invite me to speak about this book for one reason,
1:21.5	because I defended Donald Trump.
1:24.1	This is American Thought Leaders, and I'm Yankee Kelleck.
1:26.7	Alan Dershowitz, so good to have you back on American Thought Leaders, and I'm Janja Kellick.
1:31.7	Alan Dershowitz, so good to have you back on American Thought Leaders.
1:33.6	Well, my pleasure to be on. Thank you.
1:37.3	So as I was reading your book, The Preventative State, I found myself thinking back to the premiere of the Eastman Dilemma back in January atago, where you were, you know, also speaking on a panel.
1:48.8	And what struck me was that, you know, a lot of the people that were engaged in the various kinds of lawfare that we've seen are kind of in the, let's say, in the mentality of this preventative state,
2:03.4	they're trying to stop something that they believe is a terrible evil, right?
2:10.0	Your book is actually trying to address this sort of question.
	...

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