Debating “The Lobby”
As a professor of international affairs and a graduate of Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, I felt obliged to actually read “The Israeli Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy,” which was posted on a Harvard website. I’ve also read much of the negative press about this academic paper and its authors, professors Stephen Walt and John Mearsheimer.
Whether you believe the paper is repulsive or revelatory, its arguments are legitimate grounds for a rational discussion. Twenty years ago, 12 former U.S. officials voiced concerns about this very subject in a book entitled They Dare to Speak Out by veteran Congressman Paul Findley. At that time, people were not ready to engage in an unbiased discussion of the topic. It seems little has changed.