University of Chicago Students Call On Anti-Israel Prof Mearsheimer to Retire
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.”
