Peretz Versus Walt

New Republic editor in chief Martin Peretz: "Stephen M. Walt, professor at the Kennedy School at Harvard University, had had a lackluster career until he (and John Mearsheimer) happened on the Jews." Lackluster, really?

He got a BA from Stanford, then an MA and a PhD from Berkeley. He taught at Princeton and the University of Chicago before coming to Harvard. His book on The Origins of Alliances won the 1988 Edgar S. Furniss National Security Book Award. He's the author of two other books -- Revolution and War and Taming American Power. He's on the editorial board of Security Studies, Foreign Policy, and International Relations and he's a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. All this before he ever wrote "The Israel Lobby." It's a pretty successful career. Certainly, I think it stands up well to using your wife's money to buy a prestigious magazine and then wreck its finances and reputation, but maybe that's just me.

The crazy thing about recent Spine-blogging, from my point of view, is that the guy doesn't even own the magazine anymore.

Comments

"The crazy thing about recent Spine-blogging, from my point of view, is that the guy doesn't even own the magazine anymore."

He may not own the magazine anymore, but he chose the new buyers carefully.

Posted by Petey | June 7, 2007 9:54 AM

Certainly, I think it stands up well to using your wife's money to buy a prestigious magazine and then wreck its finances and reputation, but maybe that's just me.

You've brought this up a couple times before, and you'll have to do so about a dozen more times before it stops being devastating.

Posted by Neil the Ethical Werewolf | June 7, 2007 9:56 AM

:-).

But wouldn't we all love to have his wife-getting powers?

If Matt can repeat himself, so can I. Sewing-machine heiress Anne Labouisse Farnsworth Peretz is not descended from Isaac Merritt Singer himself, but from Singer's intellectual-property lawyer and partner Clark, who beat down Elias Howe's claim to the seewing machine patent. Clark has also been credited with the invention of the installment plan.

Posted by John Emerson | June 7, 2007 10:01 AM

But *that's* Peretz's exact point!

How rich is Walt's wife? Has Walt ever bought a DC political magazine? Has Walt put a whole bunch of his young "friends" on his personal payroll. Has Walt fired a long series of his editors for idiosyncratic reasons?

No, No, No, and No. So a pretty lackluster career indeed by Peretz's gold standard of professional success...

Posted by RKU | June 7, 2007 10:06 AM

For a couple weeks, I thought that CanWest and the non-Peretzian wing of the staff (sorry, Leon and Jamie) were waiting for him to say something either so crazy, libelous, racist, or all three, that they could publicly drop him...but apparently not, given his latest run of posts. Where, BTW, was his letter defending Scooter? I was waiting to hear how the verdict was "perfervid"...

Posted by jfaberuiuc | June 7, 2007 10:08 AM

Still funny. Still very, very funny.

Posted by Charles Petersen | June 7, 2007 10:09 AM

I am in the debt of Yglesias, who actually reads the idiocy, libel, and racism that Peretz spews and brings it to us weaker sorts who can't stomach it on tnr.com.

Peretz is so stupid he can't comprehend that he lives in a glass house--it makes Matt's jibes even more delicious.

Keep 'em coming, Matt.

Posted by blatherskite | June 7, 2007 10:33 AM

"You've brought this up a couple times before, and you'll have to do so about a dozen more times before it stops being devastating."

Unfortunately, it's not quite true. Peretz has done some very good things and some very bad things with the magazine, no matter how he acquired it.

It's his personal politics that are miserable. His magazine stewardship has been merely mediocre.

Posted by Petey | June 7, 2007 10:40 AM

If he didn't live in the washington bubble, Peretz would likely know that he's going down in history as a racist polemicist. He has this view of himself, a view reinforced by his employees and his friends, that he is a courageous warrior against antisemitism and in defense of Israel. In reality, he is a bitter old man that hates Arabs, dishonestly attacks anyone who criticizes Israel, and is actually seen as such by the few people in the country who care enough to know who he is. I have a feeling that his personality would change quite a bit if he knew that this isn't just how some guy on the internet sees him, it's how everyone who isn't dependent on him sees him.

Posted by soullite | June 7, 2007 10:42 AM

Certainly, I think it stands up well to using your wife's money to buy a prestigious magazine and then wreck its finances and reputation, but maybe that's just me.

Usually you can't go back to the same well twice, but this is still funny. Can you make it a regular feature?

Posted by Zagnut | June 7, 2007 10:49 AM

If he didn't live in the washington bubble, Peretz would likely know that he's going down in history as a racist polemicist.

He actually lives in Cambridge, MA.

Posted by Matthew Yglesias | June 7, 2007 10:49 AM

1) Hilariously enough, it seems to me that Marti Peretz is the one who is an anti-Semite.

Mearsheimer and Walt did NOT criticize the Jews -- they criticized the acts of the Israel Lobby which have damaged US national interests.

To say that ALL Jews --or even Most Jews -- are as disloyal to this country as are the few members of the Lobby is a vicious smear. It is anti-semitic.
But then, so is calling an American Jew a "self-hating Jew" if he questions the acts and agendas of the Neocons.

2) History shows that people like Marti Peretz are deeply dangerous to American Jews. Because what Marti is doing is similar to what Adolf Hitler did -- making an entire people responsible for the questionable manipulations of a few egotistical ,very wealthy men.

3) Look, for example , at the Holocaust. The German people suffered deep misery and deprivation from the Versailles Treaty -- as had been forecast by John Meynard Keynes in his scathing "Economic Consequences of the Peace".

British PM David Lloyd George -- one of the three authors of the Versailles Treaty -- boasted about how he won WWI by making a bargain with "world Jewry" -- that he had gained the support of influential Jews in America and elsewhere with the Balfour Declaration creating Israel.

4) While it is true that some prominent Zionists cut a deal with Lloyd George , there were many prominent Jewish leaders in Britain --like Lord Montague -- who opposed the Declaration, fearing that creation of Israel would make Jews open to charges of dual loyalty.

5) But the primary point is that the 5 Million Jews killed in the Holocaust had NOTHING to do with the Versailles Treaty and had been loyal to the Germany and to the countries of Eastern Europe of which they had been citizens.

6) By all rights, the German people should have turned on their wealthy elites --on the people who actually led Germany into WWI. Instead, Hitler was able to deflect popular rage away from his guilty, wealthy benefactors and onto an innocent group by pointing to the actions of wealthy advocates for Israel and claiming that ALL Jews were disloyal. He was successful even though relations between Jewish and non-Jewish citizens of Germany had been close prior to WWI.

7) For no good reason, America has suffered 6000+ dead, tens of thousands crippled--some for life , and the loss of $3 Trillion. This has largely been the result of malign acts the US government committed abroad in service --NOT of the national interest -- but in service to Big Oil, to the Israel Lobby, and to Big Defense.

The American people are gradually discovering how they have been lied to -- and the true cost of Bush's acts.

If economic collapse occurs, The billionaires in Big Oil and Big Defense are going to be motivated to deflect popular rage away from themselves and onto "the Jews" by pointing to the acts of the Israel Lobby.

The innocent many will be punished for the acts of the guilty few -- because the guilty few will know to get out of town.

Marti Peretz doesn't seem to realize that his archived columns -- and his false arguments that most American Jews support his views -- will be a far more damning incitement than anything David Duke could ever come up with.

Posted by Don Williams | June 7, 2007 11:00 AM

I have to wonder, what would make Peretz disregard Walt's academic success so blithely? Is it just me, or does it come from some sort of animus to academia? An animus that's not necessarily particular to Peretz either, but one that seems semi-common among some journalist and think tank-type writers?

I mean these as serious questions. What's going on here?

Posted by Scott E. | June 7, 2007 11:25 AM

Nice house he's got up here, in a swank neighborhood.

Posted by Nathan Williams | June 7, 2007 11:37 AM

Scott E:

I'm a little fuzzy on the details, but I know Peretz began his career as an aspiring social sciences academic, getting his degree from Harvard and landing an instructorship there, but never even being good enough to get a junior professorship. So he decided to land a rich wife (actually two successively richer wives as I seem to recall) and thereby "pursue other options."

By contrast, Walt is a top-ranking Chaired Harvard Professor, and one of the most senior academics in his field, as is Mearsheimer.

How does "green with personal envy" sound?...

Posted by RKU | June 7, 2007 11:44 AM

Matt,

The remarkable thing about the quote is that this is Peretz saying that someone has had a lackluster academic career. When I was an undergraduate (early 70s), he was mocked for not publishing ("How's the book going, Marty?"). Has he published any peer-reviewed scholarship in the last 30 years? He has stayed at Harvard, but I do not believe that a promotion and tenure committee has ever selected him or vetted his work.

Posted by Bill Gardner | June 7, 2007 11:50 AM

Correction to clarify the above post: I meant to say that Marti Peretz's archived columns
"could be exploited by propagandists as a far more damning incitement" than anything David Duke could come up with.

Posted by Don Williams | June 7, 2007 11:53 AM

The remarkable thing about the quote is that this is Peretz saying that someone has had a lackluster academic career. When I was an undergraduate (early 70s), he was mocked for not publishing ("How's the book going, Marty?"). Has he published any peer-reviewed scholarship in the last 30 years?

Remember, Peretz said only a few months ago that Bill Clinton, James Baker, and Mikhail Gorbachev were "has-beens." He said of Gorby: "Maybe he hopes just to be remembered. He won't be. Certainly not by the Russian people. A passing figure. Not even one on whom American colleges will bestow honorary degrees."

It seems to me that Peretz has a bit of a problem with projection.

Posted by Wally Whateley | June 7, 2007 12:08 PM

Don Williams -- you've written some great country songs but please try to make your arguments without resorting to Nazi history.

There's a reason Godwin created his law:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Godwin%27s_law

When I see "Nazi" in a discussion that's not explictly about German history in the inter-war era, I skip to the next post. Others may be far less charitable.

Posted by blathersite | June 7, 2007 12:14 PM

RKU,

Thanks--that does seem to explain a lot.

Posted by Scott E. | June 7, 2007 1:01 PM

I cannot get enough of this.

Posted by Matt | June 7, 2007 1:14 PM

Peretz's affiliation with Harvard is through the Social Studies program, which is -- crucially -- a committee that awards undergraduate degrees, and not a department with faculty. In other words, he's found a way to find a lasting toehold in the institution without having to do what Walt has done -- most significantly, get tenure. Peretz, or someone acting on his behalf, has described himself as "faculty" and Social Studies as a "Department," but neither is correct.

I was a Social Studies major a few years ago and in three years in the program had absolutely nothing to do with Peretz. It's not clear to me that he does much of anything there, except use the Harvard affiliation to pose as an intellectual. Presumably no one wants to piss him off by telling him to leave. Richard Marius (for one) pissed him off and paid the consequences.

Posted by A regular under another name | June 7, 2007 1:21 PM

"If he didn't live in the washington bubble, Peretz would likely know that he's going down in history as a racist polemicist."

"He actually lives in Cambridge, MA."

He obviously telecommutes to the DC bubble, AKA telebubbling.

Posted by Njorl | June 7, 2007 1:26 PM

Nathan writes: " Nice house he's got up here, in a swank neighborhood."

Not all *that* nice. Kind of middling, actually.

But it's good to see that rich folks don't buy houses like regular shlubs:

" PERETZ, MARTIN & ANNE LABOUISSE PERETZ , TRS. OF THE QUALIFIED PERSONAL RESIDENCE
TRUST NO.1"

Doesn't quite have the ring of 'Ponderosa', but what are you gonna do?

Posted by Jon H | June 7, 2007 1:37 PM

Walt has also published multiple articles in all the top journals of the International Relations field (International Security, International Organizations, World Politics), both of the layman-oriented journals (Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy), and even an extremely rare (for an IR article) placement in the profession's flagship American Political Science Review.

The Origin Of Alliances is one of the dozen or so standard books of IR that all grad students in the field must own and read. No student in the field of security studies would turn down a chance to study with him, or have him on their committee.

I'm trying to think of who else (in the IR field) is a bigger shot than Walt. There's Ken Waltz (who is 99% retired) and Robert Jervis (also 99% of the way to the grave). Alexander George died last year (damn). Nye, Van Evera, and Mearshimer aren't quite in Walt's league. Y'know, Walt might the preeminent IR scholar who is still publishing new work. He's the exact opposite of "undistinguished" in his field.

This is as funny as the time Mickey Kaus and Andrew Sullivan tried to knock down Paul Krugman's qualifications as an economist.

Posted by FMguru | June 7, 2007 2:14 PM

I still love to read Peretz's blog just for the sheer humor of it.

Posted by Eric | June 7, 2007 2:43 PM

LOL. Smoked.

Posted by Tom | June 7, 2007 2:53 PM

FMguru, terrific point. I'd add Ikenberry on that list, but except for that, you've got it covered. The Origins of Alliances and (my favorite) Revolution and War are among the top 25 IR books since the field began after WWI. The guy is a giant in his field, whatever one's views on his political attitudes. That Peretz can't see or acknowledge this show how much of an ideologue he really is.
I'd disagree with Matt though, I'm one of the few who still thinks TNR is a fantastic magazine. I don't agree with it a lot, but the writing is top-notch methinks.

Posted by Jordan Smith | June 7, 2007 2:54 PM

FMguru, terrific point. I'd add Doyle, Robert Keohane and maybe Ikenberry on that list, but except for that, you've got it covered. The Origins of Alliances and (my favorite) Revolution and War are among the top 25 IR books since the field began after WWI. The guy is a giant in his field, whatever one's views on his political attitudes. That Peretz can't see or acknowledge this show how much of an ideologue he really is.
I'd disagree with Matt though, I'm one of the few who still thinks TNR is a fantastic magazine. I don't agree with it a lot, but the writing is top-notch methinks.

Posted by Jordan Smith | June 7, 2007 2:54 PM

Anyone else struggle with this question: Does Matt post his best writing on Peretz or on Jonah Goldberg?

Posted by lelee | June 7, 2007 3:09 PM

Oh my god. this is too funny. Of course I knew *of* marty when he was teaching the odd freshman seminar 20+ years ago but I had no idea he still had a toe nail hold in my old department at soc stud. Plus, now I find out he lives on the same street with my children's piano teacher? Around the corner from me? Believe me, there are way better neighborhoods in cambridge than that one.

aimai

Posted by aimai | June 7, 2007 4:44 PM

Peretz is correct in asserting Mearsheimer's career as lackluster, not in terms of the academic world, but compared to his new fame among those elements most eager to smear the Jewish state. Measheimer was not a public figure before his mendacious efforts to find American supporters of Israel as the locus of evil. It is an irrelevant point to contrast this with Peretz's accomplishments of shepherding for years a publication that we all choose to talk about. Whether Peretz owns the magazine now or not is certainly of no matter.

Posted by melaw | June 7, 2007 5:57 PM

I hadn't realized Walt had such impressive credentials. It makes the hack-work in that paper with Mearsheimer all the sadder.

Posted by rilkefan | June 7, 2007 5:57 PM

Well, if we're going to get a little nasty about it (e.g. describing Walt/Mearsheimer as "mendacious" or "hackwork"), I think maybe I'll up the ante a bit...

I don't really know any of the current TNR crowd, but over the years I've been pretty friendly with some of the previous bunch of senior TNR people.

On several different occations, three of them independently---and very casually---told me that *everyone* who worked at TNR during the 1980s and 1990s believed/suspected that Martin Peretz was a foreign spy, namely an agent of Mossad.

If all the TNR people really believed this, to the extent that it was an endless topic for casual gossip, it might make you wonder.

And since TNR actually *had* been run by a foreign spy (a Stalinist agent) just a couple of decades earlier, presumably this might simply be part of a long and valued TNR tradition.

Personally, I think that a (ridiculous) accusation of being a "hack" is far less damaging than a (quite plausible) accusation of being a foreign spy and traitor.

Posted by RKU | June 7, 2007 6:15 PM

Melaw, that is not what "lackluster career" means. "Lackluster career" means you have not distinguished yourself in your chosen field. Mearsheimer clearly had distinguished himself. Mearsheimer had not acheived fame or infamy, but most esteemed academics don't. If Peretz wanted to say Mearsheimer "wasn't famous" before he happened on the Jews, he could have done so.

Posted by sophie brown | June 7, 2007 6:21 PM

Measheimer was not a public figure before his mendacious efforts to find American supporters of Israel as the locus of evil.

What Walt and Mearsheimer wrote in "The Lobby" is so obvious that the only thing remarkable about it is that it's some sort of act of courage that it got written at all.

Posted by Ed Marshall | June 7, 2007 6:41 PM

Re "*everyone* who worked at TNR during the 1980s and 1990s believed/suspected that Martin Peretz was a foreign spy, namely an agent of Mossad."
-------

That's a mean insult.

I mean, there's no way that Mossad's that damn stupid. I think you owe them an apology.

Posted by Don Williams | June 7, 2007 7:09 PM

"Shepherding for years a publication that we all choose to talk about....."

The TNR has been an important political voice for over a century and has gone far downhill since Peretz bought it.

Posted by John Emerson | June 7, 2007 7:47 PM

1st Possible Explanation: Ignorant people don't think that other people exist until they've heard of them (other people literally come into being when awareness occurs). Only post-awareness work counts for Peretz.

2nd Possible Explanation: Peretz is a one man slime machine with little regard for the facts.

Posted by Marty W. | June 7, 2007 8:04 PM

I'm not sure it was cool to publish Marty's home address. He may be a fool, but I'm not sure he deserves this!

Posted by rishy | June 7, 2007 9:21 PM

Don Williams:

My thoughts exactly!!

Each of the times a TNR guy told me the story, I argued that Peretz was just too incompetent and blatant to be a plausible Mossad recruit. He seemed more like the sort of 1950s American Red-Hot who constantly published letters-to-the-editor praising Stalin and cursing Capitalism, then went around to the Soviet embassy banging on the door and shouting that he wanted to serve the Great Socialist Motherland. But the KGB officers would just turn off all the lights and pretend that no one was home.

On the other hand, I always felt exactly the same way about all the other neocons, such as Perle et al. Imagine my absolutely utter astonshment when we happened to get a president so **monumentally** stupid as to put them in charge of foreign/national security policy. I bet the people over at Mossad were really, really surprised as well...

Posted by RKU | June 7, 2007 11:03 PM

Marty as Mossad? Naw...only in the Yellow General's dreams. I do however, strongly suspect that Israel looks upon people like Marty as useful idiots but trusting this guy as an agent? Not hardly.

Posted by mrcookie1 | June 8, 2007 7:34 AM

Re "I do however, strongly suspect that Israel looks upon people like Marty as useful idiots but trusting this guy as an agent? Not hardly. "
--------
I concur. The last guy you want as an agent is someone who would be announcing his recruitment to random passerby in DC as he excitedly rubs an erection.

Posted by Don Williams | June 8, 2007 9:14 AM