In the Crimson, Columbia historian Eric Foner lays a smackdown on Alan Dershowitz, and in pretty convincing fashion.

Here’s the back-story: In a November 20 Crimson editorial, Dershowitz lambasted “hard-left radicals “led by Professor J. Lorand Matory” as hypocrites who believe in free speech except when that speech is “pro-Israel.”

Who, other than Matory, are these hard-left radicals and “political cronies” at Harvard? Dershowitz doesn’t bother to say. Is there more than one? Wouldn’t a fair-minded editorialist feel compelled to mention at least another of this band of free speech-hating anti-Israelites?

Apparently, they were easier to find at Columbia.

At Columbia University, on the other hand, a group of professors—who are generally in sync with their extremist colleagues at Harvard—are complaining that Columbia’s President, Lee C. Bollinger, has too much freedom of speech when it comes to the Middle East. A campaign is underway to rebuke Bollinger for expressing his personal views about the Iranian dictator, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Led by well-known radicals such as Eric Foner—who complained that Bollinger’s harsh description of Ahmadinejad was “completely inaccurate”—these politically correct censors want to muzzle Bollinger. They also want to muzzle students, alumni, and other “outsiders,” who have legitimate complaints about the Middle East Studies Department, which has become a wholly owned subsidiary of radical Islam.

Strong stuff, albeit without any particular evidence to prove it—a fact that Foner points out in his response.

I don’t know what the standards of proof among law professors are, but among historians it is customary to present facts to bolster an argument. I defy Professor Dershowitz to cite any statement of mine that is “against Israel.” My criticism of President Bollinger revolved around the part of his speech that seemed to commit Columbia University to support of the Bush administration’s war in Iraq, and to blame Iran for the violence there. When introducing a foreign head of state, the president of a university is not simply expressing his “personal views,” as Dershowitz claims, but speaking for the university.

Lest anyone actually believe Dershowitz’s misrepresentation, I am categorically in favor of the broadest possible freedom of speech for everyone, whether I agree with them or not.

I think Foner has a good point. Several of them, actually. Moreover, there’s something odd and disturbing about the stigmatizing language Dershowitz uses in his op-ed—all this talk about “hard-left radicals,” “political cronies,” “extremist” and “well-known radicals.” It sounds like something you’d hear Joe McCarthy say back in the 1950s. Both Matory and Foner are pretty liberal, but the way Dershowitz describes them, you’d think they were sitting in the back of a labor demonstration waiting to set off bombs, or setting fire to Henry Kissinger’s office, or some such act of anarchism and violence. Dershowitz is smart enough to know exactly what he’s doing, and smart enough to know better.

Historians do appear to have higher standards of proof than do lawyers.