Harvard Faculty Finally Squabbles Over Something Other Than Larry Summers

Boston intellectuals are once again duking it out on the international stage, this time in the Wall Street Journal and the London Review of Books. Professor Ruth Wisse, Harvard Professor of Yiddish and comparative literature, has a piece in today's Journal (online version requires subscription) in which she assails Professors Stephen Walt, of Harvard's Kennedy School, and John Mearsheimer (of U. Chicago) for their article in the British publication, which suggests that U.S. foreign policy decision makers are in the thrall of a small group of moneyed, pro-Israel lobbyists, and that support for Israel is not in the United States' best interest. (Walt and Mearsheimer's longer working paper, on which the LRB piece is based, can be seen here.)

Bostonist is ordinarily skeptical of claims of antisemitism (Jewish though we may be), because they get thrown around so cavalierly. Remember when there was a campaign to withdraw Harvard's investments from Israel to protest the Israeli government's treatment of the Palestinians? Larry Summers said the campaign was "antisemitic in [its] effect, if not [its] intent." Later, when Summer was ousted by disgruntled faculty members, there was talk of whether antisemitism was behind the move (Summers being Jewish and all). This annoys the hell out of us, because we see people play the antisemitism card whenever Israel is involved, and it smacks to us of intellectual laziness.

But Professor Wisse may be on point this time - Bostonist took a look at Walt and Mearsheimer's working paper, and it strikes us as awfully conspiratorial and not terribly persuasive. We're (personally) no big fans of much of what Israel does (a position that has prompted some of our family members to call us a "self-hating Jew"), but we can see the utility for the United States in having a client state in that region. The working paper makes it sound like the nefarious "Israel Lobby" has hypnotized the U.S. government and has it walking steadily toward its own demise. Naturally, we'd love to know what our dear readers think, especially those with some formation in international studies.

We could have used pictures of the Harvard professors involved, but they didn't have the good graces to pose with weights and enormous bowling pins. The same cannot be said of the former Director of Harvard College, A. Molyneaux Hewlett, seen here around 1860.