‘Israel Lobby’ Dean To Leave Post in June
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WASHINGTON – The academic dean of Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, currently facing a storm of criticism for a paper he co-authored about an “Israel lobby,” will step down at the end of June, according to the School’s administrators and faculty.
The academic dean, Stephen Walt, is scheduled to vacate his administrative position on June 30, the dean of the school, David Ellwood, told The New York Sun. Mr. Walt will remain at the Kennedy School as a professor.
Mr. Walt has come under fierce criticism for his co-authorship of “The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy,” an 83-page “working paper” he wrote with a political science professor and the co-director of the Program on International Security Policy at the University of Chicago, John Mearsheimer.
In the paper, which was published by the Kennedy School, Messrs. Walt and Mearsheimer suggest that a vast network of journalists, think tanks, lobbyists, and largely Jewish officials have seized the foreign policy debate and manipulated America to invade Iraq.
The paper has drawn sharp criticism from prominent Harvard faculty, Harvard students, and members of Congress, with many critics alleging the document is riddled with inaccuracies, bias, and faulty research.
The end of Mr. Walt’s tenure as academic dean this summer, however, is “completely unrelated to the current discussion surrounding the article he co-authored with John Mearsheimer,” Mr. Ellwood said in an e-mail.
Mr. Walt’s departure was “long planned,” the dean said. “He had been due to depart last June after the normal three-year cycle, but had agreed, at my request, to stay on for one more year. Everyone at the school has long known that he would end his academic deanship on June 30.”
Phone and e-mail to Mr. Walt for comment have gone unreturned.
Related articles & editorials:
‘Israel Lobby’ Study Attracts More Abuse, March 27, 2006
Harvard’s Paper on Israel Drew From Neo-Nazi Sites, March 24, 2006
A Harvard School Distances Itself from Dean’s Paper, March 23, 2006
The Belfer Declaration, March 23, 2006
Harvard’s Paper on Israel Called ‘Trash’ By Solon, March 22, 2006
Kalb Upbraids Harvard Dean Over Israel, March 21, 2006
David Duke Claims to Be Vindicated By a Harvard Dean, March 20, 2006
Discredited Dean, March 20, 2006.
Harvard, Chicago, and the ‘Lobby’, March 17, 2006
