Did "The Israel Lobby" help or hurt professor's career?
Jonathan Chait's column in the latest New Republic -- an attempt to debunk the idea that there is any kind of taboo in the United States against criticizing Israeli policies -- has stirred up controversy. (Chait discusses the controversy here.)
In this brief video excerpt, Henry Farrell, of Crooked Timber and George Washington University, and Dan Drezner, of Tufts and Foreign Policy, discuss one facet of Chait's column. Chait argued that Stephen Walt's authorship of "The Israel Lobby"' has, far from hurting the Harvard professor's career, helped it -- for one thing, he was recently invited to write blog for Foreign Policy. Farrell counters that blogging is not a precise indicator of professional success for an academic, adding that, among other things, Walt forever lost any chance of landing a job in government.
