Kramer versus Kramer

Stephen Walt’s latest swipe at Campus Watch is his fourth. One might hope, and even expect, that a Harvard professor given to touting his academic credentials would, after four attempts, finally light on an accurate description of a program whose mission statement is straightforward: CW “reviews and critiques Middle East studies in North America with an aim to improving them.”

One would be disappointed.

In a recent attack on remarks made by Middle East studies scholar Martin Kramer, Walt writes:

Campus Watch was founded to provide a platform for critiquing the highly politicized field of Middle East studies, not to “blacklist scholars it disapproved of.” In making this baseless claim, Walt repeats a tired canard and reflects the provincialism of many CW critics, who see themselves as exempt from the type of criticism expected by more seasoned professionals such as lawyers, physicians, politicians, businessmen, and others. Criticism isn’t blacklisting, and CW could hardly “blacklist” anyone; with what power would we enforce it?

As CW founder Daniel Pipes has chronicled meticulously, Walt’s incompetence in covering Campus Watch has long history. From 2006 onward, he and his co-author John Mearsheimer repeatedly misrepresented CW, only to be called out by Pipes. In response, Walt & Mearsheimer have made unacknowledged retreats from some errors (such as their charge that Kramer was a co-founder of CW), while clinging tenaciously to others (namely that CW is part of a “lobby” that seeks to silence critics of Israel).

When will Walt get CW right? When will the Loch Ness Monster be caught? The Cubs win the World Series?

(Posted by Winfield Myers)