ever used the 'site:' search function of google ? its dead handy...
US professors accused of being liars and bigots over essay on pro-Israeli lobby
Julian Borger in Washington
Friday March 31, 2006
The Guardian
The following correction was printed in the Guardian's Corrections and clarifications column, Thursday April 6 2006
We stated on this article that "it was announced that Prof Walt would step down from his job as academic dean at the end of June" and that "the move had long been planned". A spokesperson for the Kennedy School has asked us to make it clear that the school has made no such announcement linked with the present controversy and that Prof Walt remains there as professor of international affairs.
Article continues
An article by two prominent American professors arguing that the pro-Israel lobby exerts a dominant and damaging influence on US foreign policy has triggered a furious row, pitting allegations of anti-semitism against claims of intellectual intimidation.
Stephen Walt, the academic dean of Harvard's Kennedy School of Government, and John Mearsheimer, a political science professor at the University of Chicago, published two versions of the essay, the Israel Lobby, in the London Review of Books and on a Harvard website.
The pro-Israel lobby and its sway over American policy has always been a controversial issue, but the professors' bluntly worded polemic created a firestorm, drawing condemnation from left and right of the political spectrum.
Professor Walt's fellow Harvard professor Alan Dershowitz - criticised in the article as an "apologist" for Israel - denounced the authors as "liars" and "bigots" in the university newspaper, The Harvard Crimson, and compared their arguments to neo-Nazi literature.
"Accusations of powerful Jews behind the scenes are part of the most dangerous traditions of modern anti-semitism," wrote two fellow academics, Jeffrey Herf and Andrei Markovits, in a letter to the London Review of Books. Critics also pointed out that the article had been praised by David Duke, a notorious American white supremacist.
Prof Mearsheimer said the storm of protest proved one of its arguments - that the strength of the pro-Israel lobby stifled debate on US foreign policy.
"We argued in the piece that the lobby goes to great lengths to silence criticism of Israeli policy as well as the US-Israeli relationship, and that its most effective weapon is the charge of anti-semitism," Prof Mearsheimer told The Guardian. "Thus, we expected to be called anti-semites, even though both of us are philo-semites and strongly support the existence of Israel."
He added: "Huge numbers of people know this story to be true but are afraid to say it because they would punished by pro-Israeli forces."
Soon after the publication of the article it was announced that Prof Walt would step down from his job as academic dean at the end of June. However, the Kennedy School and Prof Walt's colleagues said that the move had long been planned.
The Kennedy school removed its cover page from the online version of the article but said in a statement: "The only purpose of that removal was to end public confusion; it was not intended, contrary to some interpretations, to send any signal that the school was also 'distancing' itself from one of its senior professors."
"The University of Chicago and Harvard University have behaved admirably in difficult circumstances. We have had the full support of our respective institutions," Prof Mearsheimer said.
The article argues that the US has "been willing to set aside its own security and that of many of its allies" to advance Israeli interests, largely as a result of pressure from Jewish American groups such as the American Israeli Political Action Committee (AIPAC) allied to pro-Zionist Christian evangelists and influential Jewish neo-conservatives such as former Pentagon officials Paul Wolfowitz, Douglas Feith and Richard Perle. It argues their combined influence was critical in the decision to go to war in Iraq.
Writing in the online magazine, Slate, the British-born journalist Christopher Hitchens criticised the authors' "over-fondness for Jewish name-dropping" and argued that the first occasion the neo-conservatives had a significant influence on foreign policy was to press the Clinton administration to intervene on behalf of Muslims in Bosnia and Kosovo.
No AIPAC officials would comment about the controversy on the record.
Yesterday Prof Mearsheimer said: "We went out of our way to say that the lobby is simply engaging in interest group politics, which is as American as apple pie."
http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,,1743767,00.html
(ot) (political) letter from Iran to the US
Here is the thing, and this is a thing that is something:
There are two kinds of people in the world:
0) People who want to get their way because they think it will get them what they want.
1) People who want to get their way because they think it is what is right for everybody.
Sometimes they can seem like the same kind, depending on what they think.
Being in group (1) is valued more highly in general, so people know the value of seeming like they are in (1) even if they are (0), and that "seeming like" is what this guy from Iran is doing with the letter and probably most all the time, because Iran as a country now and pretty much throughout history has been isolated, bitter and at odds with neighboring countries and so is pretty much in the (0) group as far as countries go (even though just about every individiual Iranian I've ever met in the US has ranged from generally nice to really nice to be around).
What I think makes (1) people in the US really unhappy is that they see that the world is really full of countries in the (0) group, and that the US is in the (0) group more often than they'd like.
There are two kinds of people in the world:
0) People who want to get their way because they think it will get them what they want.
1) People who want to get their way because they think it is what is right for everybody.
Sometimes they can seem like the same kind, depending on what they think.
Being in group (1) is valued more highly in general, so people know the value of seeming like they are in (1) even if they are (0), and that "seeming like" is what this guy from Iran is doing with the letter and probably most all the time, because Iran as a country now and pretty much throughout history has been isolated, bitter and at odds with neighboring countries and so is pretty much in the (0) group as far as countries go (even though just about every individiual Iranian I've ever met in the US has ranged from generally nice to really nice to be around).
What I think makes (1) people in the US really unhappy is that they see that the world is really full of countries in the (0) group, and that the US is in the (0) group more often than they'd like.
UTENZIL a tool... of the muse.
Ummm, ok. The Guardian writing a story about political bias. That's the pot calling the kettle black.b0unce wrote:ever used the 'site:' search function of google ? its dead handy...
US professors accused of being liars and bigots over essay on pro-Israeli lobby
Julian Borger in Washington
Friday March 31, 2006
The Guardian
...
http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,,1743767,00.html
I have a very hard time taking that publication seriously. My spouse works as a tracker of media bias. Part of her job is to record the instances of positive and negative adjectives in media reporting. She's got a large list of which authors and publications routinely overuse adjectives, as well as other non-politicicised, linguistic means of tracking "bias". Apparently the Guardian is one of the worst, though admittedly it ranks behind the Weekly World News.