Walt, Mearsheimer, Dershowitz

I think I’ve mentioned, here in this Tohu Bohu, that I’m not a Zionist. I think Zionism was a mistake before the Holocaust, and I think it was a mistake as a response to the Holocaust. It was an understandable mistake, and I suspect that it was a mistake I would have taken part in myself, had I been alive at the time, but a mistake nonetheless. I think Zionism has been bad for Jews, and I think it’s been bad for non-Jews. Not that I think Israel should be dissolved, or that the dissolution of Israel at this point or in the next generation would be good for Jews (or for non-Jews, either). No, as happens with mistakes, we’re stuck with it, and now we try to work with what we have. Still, as I’m about to stick my toe into some very muddy waters indeed, I wanted to begin with that. Not a disclaimer, exactly, more a notice, a filter, a frame.

I have been, you see, refraining from comment on the recent article by John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt in the LRB called The Israel Lobby. Well, and Gentle Readers may have noticed that I’ve been refraining from comment about much of anything political lately, but I have, two or three times, considered starting a note about this piece.

Or about the argument about it. I hadn’t seen it until this morning, and still I can only claim to have skimmed it. But the reaction to it is interesting, and it is the reaction that I wanted to write about. Only, you see, Gentle Reader, I am looking at the reaction through my own lenses, and those lenses are tinted, if not tainted, with my own regret about Zionism. The article itself, and the conversation around it, is all that way, as is your own response to this note, Gentle Reader. So. Make of it what you will.

I should also add that I’ve met Dean Walt once or twice, and he seemed a good guy, and that there are people I like and respect who like and respect him, and that in general, I wish him well. Also, I have ... issues ... with the administration of Harvard University and the Kennedy School of Government (of which he is academic dean), and that, too is a lens through which I view this whole fooforaw.

Anyway, this morning I happened to notice a note at the TMP café called Stephen Walt, the "Israel Lobby" Paper, and Academic Freedom. In this note, Steven Clemons notes some responses that the Kennedy School made to the controversy surrounding its Dean’s paper. The most prominent one was a misleading coincidence; the Dean has stepped down, as he was expected to, not as a response to the controversy but because his term was over, and he had paid his debt to society. Whether big-money pro-Israel donors made hissy fits or not, the man was not going to be Academic Dean much longer. And, really, it would make no sense for the school to prolong his tenure in that chair simply because it looks bad for him to step down now. That said, it does look bad.

The other things relate to the Working Paper version of the article, which had originally been distributed, as KSG Working Papers are, with the logo of the KSG, which incorporates the famous Harvard Shield. This evidently led some people who are unfamiliar with the working paper process to assume that the views expressed in the paper were endorsed by Harvard University (vaddevah dat means), or were official statements of the KSG. Some commenters also, sloppily, referred to Prof. Mearsheimer as being at Harvard, rather than at the University of Chicago; I have no idea why. At any rate, the Kennedy School, acting under the advice of Dean Walt, changed the format of the Working Paper to remove the KSG logo, and to reword the disclaimer to identify the role of the academy in research.

I am appalled that this should be considered necessary. Frankly, I’m also perplexed that is was considered wise, or that it was considered at all, in fact. Once the paper was out, it was out, and the idea that removing the logo was even possible should never have crossed anybody’s mind. I, for instance, downloaded a copy this morning from the Social Science Research Network, complete with shield-and-globe and, strangely enough, both versions of the disclaimer. Double disclaimer! Twice the coverage!

Anyway, I’m really a trifle shocked that Harvard and KSG feel the need to state that the institution itself does not choose which working papers to release based on some standard of approving the content. I know, I know, most people don’t really know how colleges work, but do they really think that Harvard believes (again, vaddevah dat means) everything put out by its profs? It must be very confused, attempting to hold such contradictory views. Seriously, how could anyone think for a moment? The answer, of course, is because some people (and by “some people” I am specifically referring to David Horowitz and his colleagues) have been telling them crap for a long time about how colleges are brainwashing their children into liberalism. That doesn’t even necessarily presuppose a Harvard Hive Mind, depending on which crap version of the crap idea you want to believe, but it does in a sense anthropomorphize the university, from which it’s a moderately easy step to believing that Harvard Man, or rather Man Harvard, has some official belief on matters of political science.

The other response that the KSG made was to a request by a Harvard Law School prof to post, on the KSG site, a written response to the working paper. This is much more complicated. After all, the purpose of the working paper is to stimulate discussion, to give the authors the opportunity to sharpen their arguments on the rocks of criticism. I understand such criticism is, usually, posted privately to the authors, but perhaps the academic purpose is, in fact, better served by a more public discussion. On the other hand, the Law School prof in question is an expert on US appellate law. He has written, it is true, a popular book on Israel, and often appears in the public discussion of related topics. In fact, he is sufficiently public a figure that he is mentioned by name in the working paper (albeit briefly, and not at all in the LRB version). Still, to the extent that the paper is a scholarly work about political policy, written by scholars of politics and policy, is it appropriate to have a response by a non-scholar (in that field)? Is that the purpose of the academy?

Further complications: The Kennedy School chose to give Prof. Dershowitz (for it was he, surprise surprise) a platform for his response that they would not have afforded a member of another University. This was explicitly stated by Dean Ellison (Dean of the KSG, and Dean Walt’s boss, and not one of my all-time favorites, although I think he’s a better Dean than the previous fellow). What is the purpose of that? The obvious answer is that they are keeping a Harvard star happy by caving in to his pressure, pressure that they could easily resist from an outsider. That’s got to be bad for the discussion, and of course feeds into the (mistaken) impression that there is a Harvard policy or a Harvard take on things.

Further: It will be hard to criticize Prof. Dershowitz’s response for being non-scholarly when the original working paper is so shoddy and ill-constructed. It shows little evidence of being a serious scholarly work, and so deserving of serious scholarly criticism. Frankly, it reads (at least the LRB version) like an op-ed piece, or worse, like a blog entry. Yes, there’s some research there, and yes, there are Footnotes! in the working paper version, but really, there’s not much to choose between this kind of “scholarship” and that of a popular writer like Prof. Dershowitz (outside his field, I mean, I have no idea what he writes on law). The KSG, Harvard, and the authors could have shielded themselves from some kinds of criticism by (a) taking a dryer, less provocative tone, and (2) making a clearer connection between evidence and argument.

The upshot, I’m afraid, is that the whole thing, both paper and response, and even the discussion of an interesting and important (if terribly depressing) topic, reflects badly on Harvard and on the Kennedy School. That’s bad. And the fact that it’s bad—just take the bones of it, that the Academic Dean co-wrote a controversial paper, that the position of the School and the University was widely misunderstood and had to be clarified, and that the School felt the need to provide a platform to somebody outside the scholarly field to respond—indicates that there are some serious problems with the place of the academy in our current culture, and that Harvard has been ignoring them too long, and at too high a price.

Perhaps the new President will attend to this, in his (or her) free time.

chazak, chazak, v’nitchazek,
-Vardibidian.