The Shame of Harvard
Terry Traub
March 30, 2006
edited April 27, 2006
It's bad enough that the Harvard faculty drove out President Larry Summers, who
had fought against grade inflation, anti-Semitism, and political correctness at
Harvard University. Now the associate dean of the Kennedy School of Government, Stephen Walt,
has co-written, along with John Mearsheimer of the University of Chicago, a
diatribe against the Jews of America and of Israel entitled "The
Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy". In this "working paper", there are
183 references to "Jew" or "Jewish". Clearly this is not an article about
American foreign policy so much as a discussion about Jews. That the paper was
endorsed by David Duke of the Ku Klux Klan tells us much about the quality of
this work and the intent of its authors.
The paper itself is laughable in its shallow, simplistic interpretation of
political and diplomatic affairs. Consider this example of their analysis of
US-Israel relations:
"A final reason to question Israel's strategic value is
that it does not act like a loyal ally. Israeli officials frequently ignore
U.S. requests and renege on promises made to top U.S. leaders (including past
pledges to halt settlement construction and to refrain from 'targeted
assassinations' of Palestinian leaders)."
Walt and Mearsheimer appear to be saying that loyal allies obey the U.S., even
when they deem the U.S. position to be incompatible with their national
interest. This is a standard to which no other country is held by either these
authors or anyone else. A neighboring entity that through inaction or through
active participation allows its citizens to enter a country and detonate
themselves surely should expect some kind of reaction. The alternatives would
be either to passively accept the attacks of human bombs or to declare war on
the neighboring entity and put an end to it, either of which would result in
many more deaths. But Messrs. Walt and Mearsheimer appear unconcerned about
such matters.
There are so many statements in this article that appear to echo the lines of
Hezbollah, Iran, and other organizations and countries which would like to kill
all of the Israelis or drive them from their land, that one wonders whether the
authors were in fact funded by one of these groups. Consider this gem:
"Viewed objectively, Israel's past and present conduct offers no moral basis
for privileging it over the Palestinians." Now Walt and Mearsheimer show their true colors; they are moral relativists who equate the violence of Palestinian militants with the retributive actions of the Israeli Defence Force.
This line could have come right out
of a speech by any of a dozen anti-American leaders in the Muslim world. They
proceed to argue that the Israelis drove the Arabs out of Israel, supporting this
novel claim with references to the revisionist historian Benny Morris and a
couple of others quoted in a British anti-Zionist newspaper and elsewhere.
Postscript
Since my essay was written, Walt has resigned as academic dean of KSG, and he
has accused the very forces that he wrote about, i.e. the "Israel Lobby", of
smearing him for taking a courageous stand against this awesome power. Yet,
the U.S. is full of writers and opinionators who attack Israel. Israel itself
has parties of every description that run the gamut from ultra left wing to
ultra right wing. There is no shortage of critics of Israeli policies either
in the U.S. or anywhere else. Indeed, one wonders how this tiny country has
managed to survive even this long, given the sheer numbers of critics and
downright enemies arrayed against it. What little sympathy and guilt the world
once felt for the Jews in the aftermath of World War II appears to have
evaporated into the moral vacuum from whence it came, and the world has
reverted to form--hate the Jews, hate Israel, hate anyone who supports same.
So what makes these two scholars special? It is the fact that they hold (or
held) senior positions at two of the country's greatest schools, University of
Chicago and Harvard University. One would expect tenured professors in such
hallowed halls of learning to be wise beyond their times, knowledgeable without
peer, and maybe possessed of an ounce or two of common sense as well. These
men demonstrate that they lack wisdom and perspective, and common sense to
boot. They have shamed their respective universities, though they are not alone in academia in resorting to small minded anti-semitic attacks. Shame on you, Harvard and U of Chicago, and as for you, professors Walt and Mearsheimer, you flunk.
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