Informed Comment posts a letter from the Committee on Academic Freedom (North America) of the Middle East Studies Association protesting the cancellation of a talk by John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt that was scheduled by the Chicago Council on Global Affairs. Mearsheimer and Walt are the authors of the controversial book The Israeli Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy.
Juan Cole writes further:
“CCGA maintains that the speakers ... needed to be balanced by an opposing viewpoint. But both have spoken there before without needing to be immediately contradicted by someone else. (Personally, I object to this idea of ‘balancing’ speakers during their events; lots of controversial views have been expressed at CCGA without a counter. If they want balance, they can invite someone else later in the year or the next year. And note that in the U.S. public sphere and media, ‘balance’ almost never requires that a real living Palestinian be allowed to speak for him or herself, alongside representatives of the Zionist point of view. Otherwise Abraham Foxman would have to carry a Palestinian around with him everywhere he spoke, to provide ‘balance.’)”
