Academia and ‘Israel Lobby’ paper

Re “A hot paper muzzles academia,” Current, May 14

Eve Fairbanks claims that Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government was “nervous to be associated” with Stephen Walt and John Mearsheimer’s “Israel Lobby” paper, and she suggests that this nervousness came from the anticipated loss of donations. A more accurate explanation could be the paper’s poor scholarship. Mearsheimer conceded that the paper contains no original documentation and that the authors did not conduct any independent interviews.

The “Israel Lobby” paper didn’t vanish from the zeitgeist because of conspiracy or pandering to donors. It’s gone because it wasn’t worth reading.

ALAN PAUL

Los Angeles

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I signed the petition defending the academic freedom of Mearsheimer and Walt, and I resent the way I am characterized by Fairbanks. I dispute her claim that most who signed the petition “haven’t read” the paper. On what basis does she assert this? This sounds suspiciously like something she might have heard in interviews with the paper’s leading detractors.

BILL BUSH

Las Vegas