Mearsheimer and Falk Endorse Anti-Semite’s Anti-Semitic Book
John Mearsheimer
Alan Dershowitz has thrown down the challenge to Professors John Mearsheimer (U Chicago) and Richard Falk (Princeton) to debate in public their decision to endorse the anti-Semitic ravings of Gilad Atzmon in his book The Wandering Who.
Writing in The New Republic, Dershowitz observes that the Mearsheimer/Falk endorsements, along with those of a number of other credentialed academics, is an ominous sign.
These endorsements represent a dangerous step toward legitimizing anti-Semitic rhetoric on university campuses. If respected professors endorse the views contained in Atzmon’s book as “brilliant,” “fascinating,” “absorbing,” and “moving,” these views—which include Jewish domination of the world, doubting the Holocaust, blaming “the Jews” for being so hated, and attributing the current economic troubles to a “Zio-punch”—risk becoming acceptable among their students. These endorsements of Atzmon’s book are the best evidence yet that academic discourse is beginning to cross a red line, and that the crossing of this line must be exposed, rebutted, and rejected in the marketplace of ideas and in the academy.
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