Academics’ Paper on ‘Israel Lobby’ Brings Scholarly Heat
BOSTON
Former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke calls their work “A Modern American Declaration of Independence”
It is not the kind of praise Harvard University’s Dr. Stephen M. Walt and the University of Chicago’s Dr. John J. Mearsheimer had hoped for. But a paper they wrote — alleging that pro-Israel special interest groups have manipulated the United States to enact policies that favor Israel and work against American interests — has won Duke’s admiration while getting pounded by criticism elsewhere.
Since “The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy” was published as a “working paper” on the Web site of Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government late last month, accusations ranging from shoddy scholarship to outright bigotry have been leveled at the professors. Walt is the Kennedy school’s academic dean.
The Anti-Defamation League described the paper as, “A classical conspiratorial anti-Semitic analysis invoking the canards of Jewish power and Jewish control.”
“It’s David Duke with footnotes,” says Harvard Law School professor Alan Dershowitz.
