Dershowitz and Trivers Go At It

Inside Higher Ed reports that:

On Thursday, Robert L. Trivers took a train to Boston to give a talk at Harvard University the next day. Trivers is a prominent evolutionary biologist and anthropologist at Rutgers University and he had been invited to Cambridge in honor of his having won this year’s Crafoord Prize in Biosciences, a top international award that many consider a notch below the Nobel.

Trivers never got to give his talk. He says that hours before he was scheduled to lecture, he was called by an organizer and told that the appearance was being called off because of statements he had made about and to Alan Dershowitz, a law professor at Harvard. In a letter to the editor of The Wall Street Journal last week, Trivers quoted from an April letter he had sent Dershowitz. In that letter, Trivers wrote: “Regarding your rationalization of Israeli attacks on Lebanese civilians, let me just say that if there is a repeat of Israeli butchery toward Lebanon and if you decide once again to rationalize it publicly, look forward to a visit from me. Nazis — and Nazi-like apologists such as yourself — need to be confronted directly.”

According to Trivers, Dershowitz used his letter to have him declared “a threat” and blocked from speaking at Harvard…

So, why is Trivers caught up in this debate? His two sisters married Lebanese men, so Trivers has family in Beirut and has learned much about the country. His current research is about national myths and self-deception, and one of the examples he is exploring concerns Israel’s invasion of Lebanon last year.

Trivers, one of the two main biological weapons launched against W. D. Hamilton (the other being Axelrod) is now being turned against his own people, subsequent to his sisters marrying Lebanese. My my… it’s enough to make you think about extended phenotypes or something.

OK, I admit, as a supporter of self-determination, I am an Oslo Accords Zionist.... but I don’t think either Dershowitz or Trivers can justify claiming to support the Oslo Accords.

PS: It should be noted that Dershowitz hangs his moral-high-ground hat on his support for the freedom of speech of his opponents.

Posted by James Bowery on Tuesday, June 5, 2007 at 06:09 PM in
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Comments:

Posted by Jean Depression Sailer Stinks on June 05, 2007, 06:56 PM | #

There are several ideas expounded on this blog (some of which I have a “proprietary interest” in) that should at some point be expanded and become part of the “lexicon.”

For example, James Bowery’s expansion of the extended phenotype idea to the human ecology (an immensely important idea, historically on display with respect to “Gene Expression); the ideas of human virulence and vertical vs. horizontal transmission; raciosexual factors.....and then we have the importance of genetic structure with respect to genetic interests, crossriding vs. freeriding, as well as “racial cuckoldry”, in which proximate factors “trick” people into thinking that those of extracontinental origins are their “kin.”

That’s a start.

Posted by Fred Scrooby on June 05, 2007, 08:25 PM | #

I agree with Jean Depression. Maybe a MajorityRights.com glossary of terms would be handy, along the lines of the extremely useful one Bo Sears and Stanley Womack have developed over at ResistingDefamation.org (click on “Glossary,” on their site’s main page).

Posted by Guessedworker on June 07, 2007, 12:07 PM | #

James may be able to incorporate his thinking into a major new directory - not merely a glossary - in due course, if the work which he and JR have been doing bears fruit.

Posted by Jean Depression on June 07, 2007, 03:55 PM | #

More vectorism, soon coming to an immigrant or returned “tourist” near you:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20070607/sc_afp/ushealthbacteria