University of Chicago Students Call On Anti-Israel Prof Mearsheimer to Retire
John Mearsheimer, once an appropriately obscure political scientist at the University of Chicago, was little noticed outside academia until 2007. That was the pivotal year his inaccurate, sloppily-written, barely-researched, and venomously anti-Israel book was published by Farrar Straus & Giroux, which paid an astounding $750,000 advance for The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy, co-written with an equally unknown Harvard academic, one Stephen Walt.
Overnight, the two professors were rich and infamous. Being rich is the right of all Americans. Infamy brought about through freely-expressed bigotry — although certainly a right under the First Amendment — is intolerable in a tenured professor, or in anyone choosing to teach for a living. Like so many before them and since, such as — no, why give any of them any further publicity? — the two authors found a mother lode of lucre and like-minded support in the far left academic world of today, as well as among people with similar political views outside the academy.
Because of the principle of academic freedom they were at liberty to hawk their hate-filled book, which claimed falsely and maliciously that a cabal of Jewish interests is responsible for the American government’s support of Israel. The truth is, and has been since President Truman’s recognition of the state of Israel in 1948, that strong support for Israel is the preference of the overwhelming majority of Americans — who are not lobbied by anyone.
When, in September 2011, Mearsheimer endorsed a book by a Hitler apologist and Holocaust “revisionist,” Mearsheimer escaped the censure that would normally be the fate of anyone outside academia.
Well, his students have now done what no faculty member or university administrator has dared: call for his resignation. In an editorial that is far better-written and more logically-argued than the Mearsheimer-Walt screed, they wrote in COUNTERPOINT: The University of Chicago’s Conservative Quarterly, a student publication:
When, after a long career built on a theory that domestic political relationships had a minimal impact on any state’s foreign policy, John Mearsheimer co-wrote The Israel Lobby, a popular book alleging the maximal impact of a small cabal on American foreign policy, we were perplexed at the incoherence. When the book was written without accompanying scholarship on the Turkish lobby which has had a hand in the failure to recognize the Armenian Genocide or push for a Kurdish state, the Irish lobby which greatly influenced the American policy in Northern Ireland for decades, or Arab, Chinese, Tibetan, Greek, Indian, or Pakistani lobbies that have all made their mark on American foreign policy, we were left wondering at the motives of his focus. When the book was finally read and its narrative of the Israeli-Arab conflict rested on shoddy history, a mix of long-ago refuted facts (whose falsehood was easily available over Google) and stark errors of omission, we began to question the animus of Professor Mearsheimer.
For those of you who haven’t been in or around academia for several decades, this is unusual: unusually good writing and, far more significantly, unusually clear thinking. The students continue:
The R. Wendell Harrison Distinguished Service Professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of Chicago has long been an important academic, but only recently a famous one. He built a robust theory of states seeking security through regional hegemony, no matter their domestic politics. Yet this theory could not explain many of the adventures of the United States in the Middle East. There had to be an exogenous factor. He labeled this factor “The Israel Lobby.” But he did not use this factor to complicate the original model; he did not further examine the role of domestic constituencies in international relations. He left “The Israel Lobby” an outlier, an asterisk. It was a strange Jewish exceptionalism he propagated: only the Jews had dual loyalties. He was attacked. He dug in. More and more of his output was devoted to the dealings of the Jewish State. He began to speak at the events of Palestinian nationalists, groups whose assumptions would have seemed so contrary to realism. He would speak recklessly and accuse Israel of awful motives. This was a different John Mearsheimer. Something was going on.
It is gratifying to see young people who are able think critically about these issues instead of allowing themselves to be brainwashed by retreaded hippies and leftists of the 60′s. One thinks of the damage Bill Ayers has done to thousands of students who have never seen him in a true light. But hope springs eternal and it may take this new generation of students who sense that something is not quite right about their text books or their teachers attitudes-the self rightious and arrogant elites who think they know it all. Congratulations to these smart and brave students to call this buffoon to account. Retirement to his 6 figure pension and lucrative speaking engagements with radical islamists notwithstanding.
as well as among people with similar political views outside the academy.
This is one of the most encouraging pieces I have read in a long, long time.BRAVO!
Seems like the fastest way to get rich and become famous these days in academia is to trash Israel. And, with a sitting president helping “academics” like this out by insulting Israel at every chance he gets, not to mention having a foreign policy that actually helps Islamic countries fall into the arms of radical Islamists (as in Egypt and Libya), it’s not hard to see why Israel is in so much danger today.
In 2012, Jewish-Americans are going to have to make a choice. Either re-elect a president that has no love or respect AT ALL for Israel, or make a change and vote Republican. Because you need to remember that it’s not a given that Israel will always exist, especially if Iran is allowed to get a nuclear bomb. Obama is leading us right into another Cuban Missile Crisis, only this one will be in the Middle East and this one may not end the way we want it to.
LibertyShip: I know you probably mean well, but that phrase Jewish-American grates on me like sandpaper. I am Jewish, but do my darndest to think of myself as American, Pat Buchanan and Joseph Sobran notwithstanding. Count me as a Jew who despises the hyphen.
YES !!!
Great column and comments, and many thanks to Belladonna for bringing attention to this editorial. I’d only add that for some people (myself included), Mearsheimer would have to do more than just retire to salvage a piece of his reputation. He’d also have to admit his scholarship was unbalanced; apologize for providing a convenient, powerful excuse for anti-Semitism in academic and intellectual circles; and donate his advance and royalties to an appropriate charity. Unfortunately, there’s insufficient shame attendant to his retirement.
A very gracefully expressed editorial and a pleasure to read, despite the damaging and ugly cause for its publication.
As a graduate of the University of Chicago’s Department of Economics (Ph.D. ’74) I was once proud of my department and my school, and I used to contribute regularly to the school. As anti-Israel animus gained steam in the last couple of years, I have simply stopped contributing to any and all institutions that support such animus. (That includes Jewish institutions such as the local Federation for funding Theater J.) The UofC is one of the institutions to which I no longer contribute, and it is because of Mearsheimer. I discontinued the University magazine as well because of a crazy letter claiming that Israel was an apartheid state. (Of course, no criticism of any Arab states being Judenrein states.) I am glad to see that some sanity has returned to the student body at Chicago. It is truly a wonderful thing to behold.
As for Mearsheimer, there is an old saw that applies to him: He may be entitled to his opinions, but he is not entitled to his facts. When a scholar knowingly uses data that are known to be false, he stops being a scholar and starts being an idealogue. Should academic freedom extend to the knowing use of false data?
Jack, I spent 50 years in Chicagoland. Sadly, Mearsheimer is not a lone voice in the wilderness in Hyde Park…he is but one of many on the left who took up the BBC/UN slander banner against Israel.
I don’t know the precise date that the tipping point came, but there was suddenly a pronounced leftist shift against Israel. Certainly Carter was of that bent. Bush the Elder, Baker, Pat Buchanan whipsawed Israel …so that she was taking blows from both sides. But Europe turned on her with a vengeance.
The tide seemed to turn back here at home, as the people here resisted mightily in her favor. Until…
The current administration with the Malley, Rice, Power, Brzezinski faction…it’s Jeremiah Wright, Louis Farrakhan, Rashid Khalidi, Ali Abuminah influence…sends a chill up the spine of anyone who loves Israel.
Leaving Bibi to dine alone, the pronouncement that settlements should be abated and borders wiped out, sitting on our hands in Syria and Iran, but ridding Egypt of a putative ally…even the “accidental” landing of our drone technology in Iran…all seem to line up neatly as nails in a coffin, laying to rest the last shred of doubt as to where allegiances begin and end.
The LATimes could hold evidence hostage all they wish…it will not hide a lifetime of antipathy, surrounded by the most vicious anti-Semites Chicagoland has to offer.
Mearsheimer is a disgrace to Chicago. But, he is not the only one…and far from the most dangerous one today.
Oh, Mearsheimer gets credit for the theory of Political Realism now?
Hardly, that was developed by Hans Morgenthau (a Jewish professor)at the University of Chicago in the 1940s published in his seminal work Politics Among Nations. I read it in college and it changed my thinking about international politics. Maybe Mearsheimer is actually just a frustrated academic with no original ideas so he latched onto antisemitism to gain fame.
All Mearsheimer did was add on some dubious assumptions to Morgenthau’s theories only to find that they do not work.
I abhor his message and faulty scholarship, but I take a contrarian view. Academic crackpots are good practice for student target shooting as the University of Chicago students prove.
Four every handful of level-headed, clear-thinking undergraduates who wrote this editorial, there are millions more with maleable young minds who receive the imprint of the Mearsheimers and his ilk (Juan Cole, Rashid Khalidi, et al.) who accept unquestioningly the virulent, hate-filled views (not facts, but opinions) of their professors. Your position is well and good for the very brightest students who can think for themselves, but it ill-serves the majority who come into the freshman classes with no frame of reference except what the professor tells them. For this their parents pay $45,000 a year (at The University of Chicago; at Harvard it is $52,600). It does not strike me as a fair deal. The students and their parents seek an education and receive, instead, bigoted indoctrination.
The fact that these students made news is proof positive that other students have no idea of the bigotry they’re spoon-fed. Why should we as parents or as citizens applaud this perversion of the First Amendment and academic freedom. Why not have hooded Klansmen teaching at Ivy League schools? Would you favor that?
Of course Counterpoint and the students who wrote this are now further proof of the power of the Israel Lobby. Conspiracy theory wrapped up in an academic robe. This guy is the worst kind of scum.
From its very outset, I had very little sympathy for the ‘Occupation’ movement. Why? All I had to see was the large number of posters and signs spouting off about the Jews. As the saying goes, “The apple doesn’t fall very far from the tree.” The tree is the modern-day, Left-dominated academic world. Our college-educated youth are the worm-eaten fruit. That old serpent, the Father of Lies, always finds willing ears to receive his poison. Our foremother Eve was merely the first.
Wow. I took Middle Eastern Studies classes, with Muslima profs, and they weren’t this whacked. That’s pretty spectacular paranoia, to go left of a muslim studies center in an oil-rich state that’s had arabs running around it since the fifties. I bought felafel sandwiches from a guy with one hand and a hook, and he didn’t sound this crazy.
has anyone given him the note telling him, politely and quietly, that the US gov’t has bought positions in most banks- and therefore, american taxpayers are now the new Rothschild- equivalents? We, us, the people in the mirror, are the bankers? it might get hairy, if he realizes that if he’s in the 40% paying taxes, and is now a “banker.” retirement would be safer than a suicide-bomb vest.
I am so glad to hear this- and encouraged by these students’ practical, reasoned response and their request to have the embarassing, reputation damaging, jewhater prof.removed from their school.
What about the other such academics: Chomsky, Klein, Finkelstein………and others. How do we rein these a**holes in?
May God bless the University of Chicago students who had the courage to write this piece! Like all other ethnic groups, there are Jewish criminals, psychopaths and dimwits in their number. But, among the world’s population groups, none has suffered more over the millenia than the Jews. The favorable publicity and positive reception accorded Mearsheimer and Walt’s book reflects the ancient animosities [as recorded by Josephus, for example] as well as the newer racial hatreds leading to their expulsion from England and Spain a few hundred years ago and from Tsarist Russia and many Muslim countries in recent times. Let us pray that sanity and objectivity quickly regain their rightful place in our society and elsewhere on the globe! Your editorial will certainly help!
I rise in defense of the University of Chicago.
For all the pontificating on John Mearsheimer who spoke without knowing, it is staggering the number people who are ignorant of the University of Chicago. I am a student here, and I have also actually written for Counterpoint, and know the editors and contributors well. To say that their writing is uncommonly clear is to do a disservice to the University, where actually, this type of thinking is quite common. Furthermore, taking nothing away from the Counterpoint writers, but there is absolutely no courage required to stand up for what you believe at UChicago. I have been many places, both conservative and liberal, and this is by far the easiest place to express your opinion.
None of this is to discuss whether or not Mearsheimer is an anti-Semite, which frankly only God knows what’s in his heart. However, I will say this, he is neither a hippie nor a liberal, and if you would bother to pick up his books both before and after Israel Lobby, you would know that. Mearsheimer may be a bigot, and he can be rightly condemned for his bigotry, and he is certainly wrong about the role Israel (and pro-Israel lobbyists) play in American foreign policy, but conservatives do themselves no service when they assume that all academics, especially those who they disagree with, are liberals.
I am an alum of the U of Chicago and I am dismayed that someone with Mearsheimer’s bigoted views and shoddy scholarship occupies a Chair. Although I think I can guess exactly what’s in his mind and heart – greed for Arab propaganda money and the desire for notoriety attached to attacking the Jews. It’s the only socially acceptable form of bigotry in today’s academic world – it’s unacceptable to say anything even mildly critical of Muslims, Hispanics, blacks, gays, lesbians, transgendered persons; to oppose gay marriage or abortion; or to think that Republicans are not a group of racist troglodytes – and it enjoys the bonus of being highly lucrative.
I agree with what #3 Jimmy said!
I disagree completely with you. The right to free speech includes the right to offend and say bigoted and hateful things, even, if those things are said against people who are Jewish. This is the American tradition. And it is a tradition worth defending.
Stopping the free expression of ideas that one finds objectionable, whether done by the Left (often and as a matter of habit), or the right (now Ms. Rogers and PJ media) is contrary to free expression.
Ms. Rogers might be surprised to learn that her position is no different from that of Mark Potok at the SPLC. It might be a way of life for those steeped in Marxist thought regardless of whether they stand politically to shut down the thoughts and the livelihoods and often even the lives of those they disagree with. But that is not the tradition of open inquiry that was the philosophical foundation of which this country was built. I will defend your right to express your ideas Ms. Rogers, and I will not advocate your dismissal even if I could, but I will likely avoid reading your future posts based on what you have written here today.
#18
This is not about free speech. Free speech does not give you the right to slander and lie. It used to be that in america you were held accountable for what you said.
It is obvious that “Warren” is purposely confusing two issues. He’ s pretending that a call for a man to retire is the same as an effort to have him fired. He’s also trying to cause a ruckus by claiming that a tenured professor at a highly-regarded university is merely a “messenger” of an unpalatable “message” rather than the fabricator of lies (not opinions, not facts but rather lies masquerading as facts.) He wishes us all to pretend along with him that Mearsheimer is the victim here rather than the perpetrator and purveyor of bald-faced lies.
For any reader interested in the specifics of Mearsheimer and Walt’s lies in the article that led to their book contract, you can read them here: http://www.ksg.harvard.edu/research/working_papers/dershowitzreply.pdf
A few representative examples, as noted in the article cited above, laying out the Mearsheimer-Walt errors. The following are errors:
• Walt and Mearsheimer update the centuries-old “blood libel” by claiming that citizenship in Israel is based on “blood kinship.”
• On two separate occasions, Walt and Mearsheimer intentionally quote David ben-Gurion out of context so as to make it appear that he is saying the exact opposite of what he actually said.
• The authors claims that “Contrary to popular belief, the Zionists had larger, better-equipped, and better-led forces during the 1947-49 War of Independence….”
• They insist that “The mainstream Zionist leadership was not interested in establishing a bi-national state or accepting a permanent partition of Palestine.”
• They repeat Yasir Arafat’s “Bantustan” accusation – that Prime Minister Barak didn’t offer the Palestinians a contiguous West Bank in 2000 – concluding, contrary to the published maps, that “no Israeli government has been willing to offer the Palestinians a viable state of their own.”
Congratulations to the brave University of Chicago students who are proving true to tradition and defending their right to a proper education. If a doctor gives you a poisonous concoction you can sue him, but if a professor dishes out falsehoods he is protected by “freedom of speech.” You are right warren, that Mersheimer is entitled to his opinions; but he is not entitled to making up nonsense and claiming it as fact. Thank you Belladonna for bringing this important issue to our attention. There is nothing wrong with students, who are paying for their education, to demand quality, not BS. And there is especially nothing wrong with objecting to antisemitism.
Juliana Pilon
Warren, dear lad, you are yourself confused. You are entwined in the left and rightness of things.
The article by Belladonna refers to the wrongness of things, the falseness of them. The disfiguring of facts. The lies and twists that Mearsheimer resorts to.
The man has no place in a university. Free speech is one thing. Falsehoods, poor research (or worse, skewed research) and bad scholarship (do I repeat myself here?) are an entirely different matter Exposing the man, at long last, and asking for his voluntary departure are well within the grounds of protected free speech. Belladonna is commenting on that. Nowhere did she call for Mearsheimer’s “dismissal” as you suggest.
So what’s your beef?
I’m not sure why a book titled “The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy” should have to address Turkish or Irish lobbies since it is not presented as an overview of such matters or how failure to do so means such a book posits that only Jews have dual loyalties.
I understand that there is a great deal of attention paid to the Jewish lobby within the U.S. and that within Islam and the political Left, there is little doubt of the lack of context and proportion Israel receives compared to much higher casualties in other nearby conflicts. The West receives this decontextualization itself as one has to delve past the European Crusaders to the Ottoman Crusaders to finally get to the real Crusaders, which was Islam itself so I understand the hypocrisy since Muslim whitewash history to suit their egos and agenda.
Shoddy scholarship and agendas aside, I’m not sure if it’s good to start criticizing books based on what they don’t write about unless that context is begging within the context of the book itself. One also wonders whether this book is an example of what came first, the chicken or the egg, since it’s large advance is clearly based on the said distorted interest on Israel, the type of interest a book about the Kurds would never command and so the “urban myth” continues. But news and what constitutes news in not anti-Semitism. However the unholy interest the U.N. shows in Israel IS clearly wrong since there is little sense of proportion or context in this regard though I think a stronger case can be made there for success-hatred typical of Leftist Critical Pedagogues rather than Jew-hatred.
What you have in the end is truth and truth and it is important to be clear what the issues are and not drag in other non sequiturs by pure suction.
As for regional hegemony, the “success” of the Israeli lobby mirrors the importance of Israel as an aircraft carrier in the middle east during the Cold War but above that I give you oil to explain the geographic discontinuity.
The omission in Mearsheimer’s book of any mention of any other lobbies concerned with foreign policy is part of a strategy to portray the pro-Israel lobby as unique, uniquely powerful, and sinister. An honest description of other such groups would make it clear that pro-Israel forces are no different from those advocating good relations with many other countries, and don’t necessarily have a more powerful influence on foreign policy. (Good relations with Israel are broadly popular with the American public, which is not always true for policies involving other countries that their lobbies advocate.) In other words, the omission is part of the book’s message of distortion and vilification.
Apropos your reference to Israel as an “aircraft carrier,” American military forces have never used Israel as a base for projecting force in any Middle East conflict, and unlike other American allies, Israel does not and never has depended on American troops to fight on its behalf.
In reply,
I am all in favor of sound scholarship. But who is to be the arbiter of that scholarship? Open debate is the best way to the truth, not suppression of ideas that you find distasteful. And what better way to suppress debate than to insure that people can’t express their opinions without fear of losing their livelihood? Surely tenure must mean more than toeing the party line at all costs?
As for pundit’s question. I fail to see the distinction between demanding a man’s dismissal or agitating for his resignation. Either way, the individual is being pressured to lose his job because he has expressed ideas that you or another group find abhorrent.
This is nothing more than suppression of free speech. And it is intolerable to the survival of an open and free society.
I second Pundit’s comment that you’re confused.
None of us calling for Mearsheimer’s voluntary retirement have the coercive power of government behind us. We’re private citizens exercising our own first amendment right to respond to offensive speech with more speech. Our call for Mearsheimer’s voluntary retirement doesn’t exceed the boundaries of our protected speech, because it’s in fact central to at least one of the ideas we’re expressing: Namely, the idea that unbalanced, sensationalistic scholarship doesn’t belong in the academy.
Now you’re free to argue that, to the contrary, unbalanced, sensationalist scholarship DOES belong in the academy; and even to boycott writers who disagree with you. (In fact, you seem to relish both those ideas.)
But your calls for writers you disagree with (including the UofC authors, Belladonna and her commenters here) essentially to “shut up,” serve not the cause of free expression that you claim to support, but more its suppression.
You need to separate the issues of freedom of speech and academic integrity. Firing a scholar for expressing unpleasant opinions is wrong. Firing a scholar for bad scholarship is right. In this case, bad scholarship means taking money from Israel’s enemies. That’s called a conflict of interest.
As someone who is quite familiar with the academic world, I am astonished, in a positive way, that the students of Chicago University were so astute and brave. Too often poor research is confused in academia with free speech, and opinion is passed as fact; and students are usually the first to fall victim. Kudos to the U. Chicago students!
Interesting… I think this sheds brilliant light on the world of academics. Kudos to the students for taking a firm stance.
To JPL17,
I am not calling for anyone to “shut up” as you put it. I am saying and will continue to say that calling for someone to lose their livelihood because they have expressed ideas that one group decides are offensive is not conducive to open and free inquiry. I have not called for Ms. Rogers to be terminated. Nor am I agitating for her to retire from PJ media. I am just not interested in reading the thoughts of someone who is so quick to shut down the right of another person to express their ideas.
If you do not want to read what a professor from U of C or anywhere else has read that is your right. And you are also right that you can agitate to have him removed. I just think the more honest way to approach disagreement is either to engage in the debate or ignore the messenger. But stop trying to destroy the messenger whose message you disagree with. That does not help any cause or advance understanding. In fact, it undermines understanding and civility. It is really that simple.
Sorry, but that’s an extremely weak response, for several reasons:
#1, you failed even to address my main point, which was that “unbalanced, sensationalistic scholarship doesn’t belong in the academy.”
#2, instead of addressing that argument, you set up a weak “straw man” argument that I never made, so you could easily knock it down. In particular, you mischaracterized my actual argument (see #1 above) as the clownish, “it’s OK to destroy any messenger whose message I disagree with.” But as you well know, that wasn’t even remotely the argument I made. Whoever’s argument you did rebut, it wasn’t mine.
#3, as to your claim that you’re “not calling for anyone to ‘shut up,’” I think you protest too much. Your actual words were to the effect that calling for Mearsheimer’s resignation was “intolerable,” and “nothing more than suppression of free speech.” Which is really just a fancy way of saying, “shut up.”
JPL17: You speak for many other readers who are disgusted by Warren’s weasely ways. He’s not a serious commenter. Your comments have been wise and accurate. His have attacked others for what they did not say. He appears to purposely twist the clear meaning of comments made by clear-thinking readers. It must be tedious to answer him but you did so dispositively.
In summary,
I do think that demanding someone’s retirement because he has expressed ideas that you or any other group find offensive is both intolerable and nothing more than the suppression of free speech.
The University of Chicago students demanding the resignation of the professor would have demonstrated far more courage and character if they had challenged him to a public debate.
Mearsheimer has not accepted a single debate since the book was published. Many have challenged him to debate, including Professor Alan Dershowitz of the Harvard Law School. He has refused every offer to stand up and defend his indefensible book. The students at the University of Chicago, like everyone familiar with this putrid episode, is well aware of that, although you, “warren” seem not to be. Now you know what the students knew.
You have been beating a dead horse for three days now. You pretend there is no difference between calling for a man to resign and requesting that his employers fire him. You pretend that people who are disgusted by Mearsheimer’s proven lies are disagreeing with his “ideas.” You bring up red herrings without due diligence. You have offered ample evidence of only this: what and who you are.
“I do think that demanding someone’s retirement because he has expressed ideas that you or any other group find offensive is both intolerable and nothing more than the suppression of free speech.”
Really? Then please help me understand your position better, Warren.
Are you saying that tenure should be a lifetime license to do anything you want, including performing shoddy research, falsifying data, drawing conclusions unsupported by data, spreading lies, and endangering civilized people, but ONLY as long as someone else finds your ideas offensive? And that it’s OK to demand your retirement for doing these things (e.g., performing shoddy research, spreading lies, etc.), provided NO ONE finds your ideas offensive? In other words, are you saying that it’s the offensiveness of your ideas that makes you untouchable?
OR are you saying that once you have tenure, you should be allowed to do anything you want (including performing shoddy research, falsifying data, etc.) REGARDLESS of whether your ideas are offensive?
Just seeking clarification here.
Anyone who responds to Warren is wasting his or her time. He, Warren, persists in misreading not only Belladonna’s comments, but everyone else’s as well. Plus in his comment #25 he makes three horrible grammatical errors. He combines these with errors in thinking and perceiving. And he refuses to listen to what is being said as he prefers to blunder on ahead with his blinders on. Engage him at your own cost–of time and energy.
Hey Warren, lying either intentionally or by using faulty data IS NOT use of free speech; it’s libel or slander. You know there are laws against that. What I want to know is why the university itself hasn’t stomped on him? Oh, silly me, it’s Chicago. They have no morals.