Letters to the Editor
This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.
‘2 Professors Fail To Clean Up Their Act’
Two aspects of “The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy” by Stephen Walt and John Mearsheimer are rather astonishing [Arts & Letters, “2 Professors Fail To Clean Up Their Act,” August 29, 2007].
The first is that academics from these prestigious institutions could write a book about the Israel Lobby without interviewing any current or former government officials concerning the Lobby’s influence.
When I was a student at the University of Chicago, any professor I had would surely have given me an F were I to turn in a paper with such shoddy scholarship.
The second is that, for the Lobby to have had such a negative effect on U.S. Middle East policy, overwhelming majorities of U.S. Senators and members of the House of Representatives, not to mention the American people, had to be either totally incapable, over long periods of time, to assess America’s national interests in the Middle East, or knowingly act against them.
It seems the low regard Messrs. Walt and Mearsheimer have for scholarly standards is surpassed by their low opinion of the American public. As is often true with anti-Semitism, its victims are rarely limited to Jews.
MARTIN GROSS
Livingston, N.J.
Please address letters intended for publication to the Editor of The New York Sun. Letters may be sent by e-mail to editor@ nysun.com, by facsimile to 212-608-7348, or post to 105 Chambers Street, New York City 10007. Please include a return address and daytime telephone number. Letters may be edited.
