Rather than facilitating an academic discourse on campus, Professor Stephen Walt's talk last week had the unfortunate effect of actually stifling such a conversation. As strong proponents of free thought and speech, and liberal members of the Jewish American community, we feel that a topic such as this one deserves the same critical examination given to any other contentious contemporary issue.
Unfortunately, while we have a great deal of respect for Walt as a preeminent scholar of international relations, the lack of intellectual depth afforded by his thesis leaves a gaping hole in both the campus and national discourse.
Walt, with his co-author Professor John Mearsheimer, argues primarily that America's "Israel lobby" skews America's Middle East policy disproportionately in favor of the state of Israel. While we agree that the implications of this opinion are valuable to the American political conversation, Walt's specific argument makes a number of blanket assumptions that seriously undermine its academic credibility.
Most prominently, Walt explained the Israel lobby as a "loose coalition" of organizations and peoples all sharing a common ambition of maintaining unequivocal U.S. support for Israel.
However, in answering students' questions, Walt demonstrated the definition's ambiguity and lack of meaning by effectively grouping right-wing, left-wing, bipartisan and nonpartisan groups all under the same umbrella.
For his lecture to place the New York Times within the same ideological framework as Donald Rumsfeld and Christians United for Israel, for example, is an ill-fated and desperate attempt at casting a loose definitional net to reel in an argument. To be this unclear on a topic of such controversy has the effect of seriously weakening the credibility of his argument.
Further damaging is Professor Walt's assertion that the Israel lobby played a significant part in the United States' decision to invade Iraq in 2003. Walt justifies this claim by blanketing the "lobby" in the neoconservative policy of a few of its members.
However, this argument reflects a huge gap in causality, again overlooking the nuanced political attitudes held by the lobby's multiplicity of "members." First, Walt assumes neocons were acting as members of the lobby, when in fact they were most likely acting as ... neocons.
Secondly, the war was widely believed to be in Americans' interests by many parties, even those not included in Walt's conception of the "lobby." To claim that policymakers favored invasion under the pretext of Israel support, and not under the perception of U.S. interest at the time, shifts responsibility for the war from those on whom accountability really ought to fall.
In reality, certain members of the "lobby" did support the war based on the Bush administration's misleading intelligence, just the same as many other American political players.
But to say that the United States government decided to go to war against American interests because of Israel is a huge logical jump which uses the Israel lobby as a scapegoat for the irresponsible beliefs and actions of certain neoconservative policy makers.
The larger picture which emerges is that of a lack of scholarly analysis and expertise on the Middle East. While Walt and Mearsheimer's work on IR theory is among the best in the field, being experts in one area does not make them experts in another. Walt's claim that the United States unequivocally supports settlement in the West Bank ignores the fact that Israel's freeze on settlement expansion was a direct result of U.S. pressure.
His comment that the United States unequivocally backed Israel's response in Lebanon in July 2006 ignores the fact that Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice publicly asked that Israel "exercise restraint [and] be concerned ... about civilian infrastructure."
Finally, claiming that campaign finance reform will minimize the lobby's influence ignores the fact that, as Walt states in his book, only about one percent of PAC contributions in the 2006 election cycle came from those Walt included in the pro-Israel "lobby." This is less than contributions from almost every other interest group.
While we'll spare the reader a laundry list, Walt's policy of selecting facts and ignoring others contributes to a larger mentality of "Crossfire"-style debate rather than true academic discourse. The former is based in sound bites and emotion, the latter in fact, analysis and expertise.
While Walt's comments Tuesday evening may have prompted a response, their poorly supported, one-dimensional nature inevitably prevented the very same discourse for which Walt claimed to be advocating. We contend that a true discourse on the issue would better serve the interests of not only those suffering on all sides in the Middle East, but also the American policymakers and academics grappling with our role in the region.
That Professor Walt was either unable or unwilling to serve these interests is a disappointment and a shame.
Amy Spitalnick is a senior majoring in political science and Middle Eastern studies. Scott Weiner is a senior majoring in international relations.
