There are few academics in the US who can bring to bear the sort of knowledge, background and expertise that Professor John Mearsheimer of the University of Chicago can. Now known, with co-author, Stephen Walt, as the author of the best-selling book The Israel Lobby, Mearsheimer's expertise extends beyond the Middle East.
In an excellent piece in the Sydney Ideas Quarterly, Antony Loewenstein profiles Mearsheimer:
"With the death of Samuel Huntington last year, Mearsheimer’s prominence in the field is virtually undisputed. Huntington, the author of the controversial Clash of Civilisations, was a spur to Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt's even more controversial book, The Israel Lobby and US Policy. Walt, from Harvard University, explained in the magazine Foreign Policy, that although both of them often disagreed with Huntington, 'some of his own writings contain similar warnings about the distorting influence that ethnic groups could have on US foreign policy'."
And:
"Mearsheimer, who has been teaching political science at the University of Chicago since 1982, laments that over time, intellectuals in the academy have had less impact on public life. 'This is the function of two factors,' he said. 'One, with increasing professionalism, intellectuals find themselves talking more and more to each other and to students than to the general public. Second, when the Cold War first started, the US had very little intellectual capital in Washington, so what happened in the academic world had more impact on the policy world. It's no accident that some of the first national security advisors were from the academic world, such as Henry Kissinger and Zbigniew Brzezinski.'
As a leading opponent of the war, Mearsheimer rarely appears in its pages. It is depressing, he says, adding that those who were right about Iraq remain largely unpublished in the US mainstream media today while the neocons and their backers continue to pollute op-ed pages across the country."
In an excellent piece in the Sydney Ideas Quarterly, Antony Loewenstein profiles Mearsheimer:
"With the death of Samuel Huntington last year, Mearsheimer’s prominence in the field is virtually undisputed. Huntington, the author of the controversial Clash of Civilisations, was a spur to Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt's even more controversial book, The Israel Lobby and US Policy. Walt, from Harvard University, explained in the magazine Foreign Policy, that although both of them often disagreed with Huntington, 'some of his own writings contain similar warnings about the distorting influence that ethnic groups could have on US foreign policy'."
And:
"Mearsheimer, who has been teaching political science at the University of Chicago since 1982, laments that over time, intellectuals in the academy have had less impact on public life. 'This is the function of two factors,' he said. 'One, with increasing professionalism, intellectuals find themselves talking more and more to each other and to students than to the general public. Second, when the Cold War first started, the US had very little intellectual capital in Washington, so what happened in the academic world had more impact on the policy world. It's no accident that some of the first national security advisors were from the academic world, such as Henry Kissinger and Zbigniew Brzezinski.'
As a leading opponent of the war, Mearsheimer rarely appears in its pages. It is depressing, he says, adding that those who were right about Iraq remain largely unpublished in the US mainstream media today while the neocons and their backers continue to pollute op-ed pages across the country."
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