Judging Freedom - Prof. John Mearsheimer : Genocide, Free Speech, and Academia

Episode Date: May 2, 2024

Prof. John Mearsheimer : Genocide, Free Speech, and AcademiaSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Thank you. Hi, everyone. Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom. Today is Thursday, May 2nd, 2024. Professor John Mearsheimer joins us now. Professor Mearsheimer, always a pleasure. I'm very taken aback, as I expect you are, by the attitude of police and mayors and governors not hesitating to use very, very serious force on student demonstrators in order to squelch the speech that the government hates and fears. And before we get into that, I would like to ask you to help us with a couple of basics. Yesterday, the Congress or the House of Representatives passed legislation and sent it over to the Senate, which so broadly defined anti-Semitism, that if I were a professor there and said, from the river to the sea, let everyone be free,

either I could be disciplined or the school could be disciplined and perhaps lose federal funds. So let's start with some basics. What is anti-Semitism? Well, the problem in answering that question is that because Israel's supporters in the United States accuse anyone who criticizes Israel or criticizes the U.S.-Israeli relationship or criticizes the Israel lobby as an anti-Semite, what we have is a situation where the term has become, to some extent, meaningless. I mean, I've been called an anti-Semite on numerous occasions since Steve Walton and I wrote the Israel lobby article and then the book. And I believe there's no justification for calling me an anti-Semite. But again, I criticize the lobby and Israel and the U.S.-Israeli relationship. So by definition, I'm an anti-Semite.

If you ask me what is real anti-Semitism, it is where somebody hates Jews because they are Jews and behaves towards them in noxious ways. And I'm fully aware that there are instances of anti-Semitism in the United States and around the world more generally. There are anti-Semites in the land. But I think when most people call someone an anti-Semite these days, that's not what they're talking about. They're using the elastic definition to criticize huge numbers of people who are saying things that Israel's supporters don't like. I mean, it is basic First Amendment law that the government cannot get involved in evaluating the content of speech, whether your speech is motivated by a disgust over what the IDF is doing in Gaza, or whether your speech is motivated by a hatred for Jews, you have the right to say what you want.

Absolutely. I agree. But I mean, it's just very important to understand what's going on here. The greatest threat to the First Amendment in this country at this point in time is Israel's supporters. It's the Israel lobby. And what's going on here, to dig a layer deeper, is that Israel is doing horrendous things in Gaza. And all sorts of people are talking about it and criticizing Israel. And what the lobby wants to do is shut down that criticism before it goes too far and before too many people recognize exactly what's happening. And the only way they can shut down that criticism is to basically throw the First Amendment out the window. And that's what's happening here. Does it, without getting too semantic, or at the risk of getting too semantic, does it matter that the Jews are not Semites? Or does

this phrase anti-Semitism just means hatred for the Jewish people? They're Ashkenazi, they're Eastern European Jews. The Palestinians are the Semites. Well, I think that you don't want to go down that road. I think that when we talk about anti-Semites or anti-Semitism, we're talking about hatred. For the Jewish people. Yeah. And I think it's best to keep it that way. And again, I think we want to recognize that there is real anti-Semitism in the land and that we should combat it. But that's not what's going on here. The idea that, you know, these students who are protesting on these various campuses are a bunch of anti-Semites is not a serious argument.

Again, that's not to say there might not be one or two anti-Semites in the crowd, but the fact is that a good number of the people in the crowd are Jews themselves, and a good number of the people who've been arrested are Jews. And the idea that Jews are being beaten up in some sort of systematic way because they're Jews is not a serious argument. There's no serious evidence for that. What is Zionism, Professor Mearsheimer? Well, Zionism is a commitment to Israel, and it's basically another way of talking about the Jewish state. Zionism is a commitment to having or creating and having a state that represents the Jewish people. If you think about the famous book by Theodor Herzl, who I would call the father of Zionism, about that concept, the book is called The Jewish State. The Jewish state is another way of saying nation state. The nation here are Jews, or the nation is Jews. And so Zionism is all about the Jewish state. And somebody who is a Zionist has a commitment to maintaining Israel, maintaining a Jewish state. My friends

who are anti-Zionists don't believe that there should be a Jewish state. They believe that between the river and the sea, there should be a democratic state. They believe that between the river and the sea, there should be a democratic state. And whether it's dominated by Jews or it's dominated by Palestinians is largely irrelevant. They are anti-Zionist. And of course, if you're a Zionist, you don't buy that for one second. Is Israel a democracy? It all depends. If you're talking about greater Israel, which is what I would talk about, because that is the fact on the ground that matters these days, it is not a democracy because the Palestinians in the West Bank and the Palestinians in Gaza do not get to vote, but they are part of greater Israel. A more interesting question is whether or not Israel is a liberal democracy like the United States or Britain or most European countries at this point in time. And Israel is clearly not a liberal democracy because if it were liberal, it would have to have equal rights for all its members. And it does not have equal rights

for the Palestinians, even for those Palestinians who have a right to vote. And this is why, of course, many people say that Israel is an apartheid state. But it's not a liberal democracy, and I don't believe it's much of a democracy. Well, democracy not only means majority rule and the right to vote, it also means equal rights protected by the government. If I were to move to Jerusalem as an American Roman Catholic, could I buy real estate and could I register to vote? I don't know. This involves technical laws that I'm not familiar with. even most of the Zionists now would prefer to have a state that's populated almost exclusively by Jews. I mean, this is why there's so much emphasis on ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians in both Gaza and the West Bank. Why is Israel referred to as the state of Israel

rather than the country or the nation of Israel? I don't know. It's an interesting question. All right, again, I might be delving too much into semantics. How effective is the Israel lobby in suppressing speech? Now, I'm asking in the U.S., I'm asking you this after two weeks of college students being arrested because they support the rights of the Palestinian people and the House of Representatives threatening colleges and universities and, quite frankly, all educational institutions if they say things or permit things to be said that can loosely be defined as anti-Semitic. How powerful is that lobby at suppressing free speech here in the U.S.? Well, it's actually been wildly successful for decades. It's very hard to find anyone who would criticize Israel in the mainstream media, for example.

And there were surveys that were done before October 7th, which showed that many academics self-censored when it came to Israel. If you were an academic and you were to criticize Israel or criticize the U.S.-Israeli relationship in a serious way, you would pay a significant price. There's just no question about that. Steve and I wrote the article in 2006 and the book in 2007, and we have lengthy discussions of all sorts of cases where people were punished one way or another in the academic world for criticizing Israel. And then if you go into the mainstream media, I mean, you were grabbing the third rail for sure. But what's happened here, Judge, is that as a result of October 7th and what the Israelis have done in response to October 7th,

all sorts of people are criticizing Israel. And given that we have social media, especially platforms like TikTok, Israel and the lobby and the U.S.-Israeli relationship are taking a beating. So what's happening is that the lobby is desperate to shut this down. These protests on campus just mortify people in the lobby. And the question is, how can they stop them? So tremendous pressure is being put on university administrators, university presidents in particular, and tremendous pressure is being put on the White House and on Congress to act to shut down the protests on campus. Look, just to give you two examples that highlight what's going on here. Was there any discussion of anti-Semitism on college and university campuses before October 7th? Was

there a big uproar about anti-Semitism in academia before October 7th? The answer is no. The question I would ask you is, the president of Harvard and the president of the University of Pennsylvania have been pushed overboard largely by rich donors who are joined at the hip with Israel. These are people who have a passionate attachment to Israel, who have interfered at Harvard and Penn to get these two women presidents fired. Do you think if October 7th had not happened, that these women would be in power now? Well, of course they would. Of course they would. They were thrown overboard, right, because they didn't crack down on the protesters. And this is why the Columbia president is in trouble. It's why the Northwestern president is in trouble. The lobby desperately

wants every president and every politician to crack down on the protesters. And automatically, that takes us into freedom of speech territory. And what's happening here, very clearly, is that the lobby is working overtime to undermine the First Amendment. You are a professor at one of the great academic institutions in the United States, the University of Chicago, whose academic standards are superlative. What is the status of free speech, A, on that campus, your campus with students, and B, amongst academics? Well, I would imagine that there's quite a bit of self-censorship here, as there is everywhere. But the University of

Chicago has a rich tradition when it comes to freedom of speech, and it has a rich tradition when it comes to tolerating protests. And you remember, surely, that when this place blew up in 1969, the students took over the administration building. Ed Levy, who was then the president of the university, did not call in the police. At places like Harvard and Columbia, Columbia of course blew up in 68 and Harvard also blew up in 69, but the presidents of Harvard and Columbia did call in the police and it backfired on them, but Levy, much to his credit, did not. He waited out the protesters and then he eventually suspended them. And that was seen at the time as the smart thing to do. And I think if you had protests now and there was no lobby, these

university presidents would just wait out the protesters. They would not call in the police, especially since the George Floyd affair took place not that long ago. You remember, the idea of calling in the police was unthinkable in the wake of the whole George Floyd fiasco. Here we are, not long after that, calling in the police. Why has this happened? And the answer is the power of the lobby. Here's Max Blumenthal, one of your colleagues on the show, happens to be a big fan of yours, describing his fears about all of this. Yeah. And the one thing that really concerns me because of what we saw in 2020 with BLM, with the Proud Boys, that there are elements in the national security state and the political elite that actually want

to see a strategy of tension, that want to see violent chaos, political chaos play out in the streets. And that's what kind of concerns me going forward in the election is that they actually could try to play this to their benefit. Might the lobby, might Max be onto something? Might the lobby actually feel that it could benefit from chaos and conflagrations and therefore in the minds of the public, more justifiably, the use of police force? I think that the lobby understands that the more this spins out of control, the more you go down the road that Max is describing, the bigger the problem for Israel. And the reason is that people who are sitting on the fence will come off the fence and side with the protesters. I had a good friend who was at Harvard in 1969, and he said the radicals actually had very little support when the protests first started and they took over the administration building. But once the police were called in,

the end result is that many sort of middle of the road students who were not committed one way or the other sided with the protesters. So I think you have a situation here where if what Max describes happens, and he may be correct about where this one is headed, and the police continue to crack down on protesters, and we have a giant fiasco here in Chicago at the Democratic National Convention, that what this will do is it will drive people away from the Israeli side of the story, and it will cause great sympathy on the Palestinian side. So I think the lobby, if anything, is wishing that this one will go away. But of course, it's not going to go away. Here's a cut number nine, Chris. Here is a Columbia University professor

of whom I have never heard. I don't know if you know her, Rebecca Wiener. This professor was outed. I'll tell you how she was outed after we listened to her. But let's listen to what she had to say about peaceful protest on the Columbia campus. This is not about students expressing ideas. It is about a change in tactics that presents a concern and a normalization and mainstreaming of rhetoric, and I'm not just talking about language. I'm now talking about tactics, and that's what shifted our response yesterday. But a normalization and mainstreaming of rhetoric associated with terrorism, that has now become pretty common on college campuses, right? You see people wearing headbands associated with foreign terrorist organizations.

This happened in October when you had a viral TikTok re-issuing of Osama Bin Laden's 2002 letter to America. So that's a larger concern, it's separate from what happened yesterday, but they're related. We do not want ideas, We do not want campuses, which are where people are supposed to be learning and being in a conducive environment for all of the things that we do in schools, being turned into places where people are committing vandalism, property damage, and committing crimes. She had finished her statement. We do not want ideas that we disagree with. Now, I doubt that she's going to be back at Columbia because it turns out that she's an undercover police officer who was teaching at Columbia and who hung out with a lot of the demonstrators and reported on them. So I would imagine she's no longer welcome there, but she's part of the problem of equating legitimate political speech. We think the Palestinians have the right to a

government. We think that the IDF is committing genocide. Perfectly legitimate political statements. She's equating that with violence. Exactly. I mean, what she represents is a fundamental threat to academia and to the United States at large, the broader society. I mean, it's just a terrible situation that we're in. You know, what she's trying to do is talk about tactics that these protesters are using that are so dangerous. What kind of threats do we see that are so dangerous on college campuses? Yes, at one or two places, the students have taken over the administration building or

a different building. This happened in the late 1960s. It's not that big a deal. Those students should be punished for taking over a building. Okay. But the talk, I mean, the idea that these students are terrorists, and you noticed how she linked them with terrorists, is just nonsense. She said they were terrorists because they wore Palestinian headbands and replayed a speech by Osama bin Laden. This is crazy. You're allowed to do that. People can sympathize with Hamas. I understand why many

Americans, including many American Jews for sure, do not like to hear that kind of rhetoric. They don't like to hear people sympathizing with Hamas. But this is the United States of America, and you're allowed to say that you sympathize with Hamas, and this is the United States of America. And you're allowed to say that you sympathize with Hamas. And you're allowed to say that you sympathize with what the IDF is doing in Gaza. That's what freedom of speech is all about. But again, the thing you have to understand, Judge, is that once you open up these debates and allow people to say what they want, this does enormous damage to Israel's image in the United States. It does enormous damage to the lobby and to the U.S.-Israeli relationship, and they don't want that. I'm going to play you a clip from another fan of yours, Colonel Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson, in which he expressed an opinion as to what is the principal cause,

this takes us back to where we started our conversation, of anti-Semitism in America today. I don't know how he lives with himself, Colonel. I don't either. I don't either. He is the living manifestation on earth today of what causes anti-Semitism. Those are the words of a rabbi who's been my friend for a long time. His exact words were, the greatest motivator for anti-Semitism in the world today is Bibi Netanyahu. What do you think? Well, I would just say I don't think we have an anti-Semitism problem in the United States. And that's the good news. You know, that is good news.

But the Republicans in the House of Representatives and the Israeli lobby want us to think that we do and that it's so bad we have to tamper with the First Amendment. I agree, but that's simply because they're interested in shutting down criticism of Israel. Look, Israel is in the process of executing a genocide. This is an apartheid state that is executing a genocide. Is it any surprise that lots of students who have access to platforms like TikTok and understand what is going on are out protesting? It's hardly surprising at all, but this is not anti-Semitism. And again, many of the protesters are Jews, and many people who are sympathetic to the protesters are Jews. So the idea that this is sort of like Weimar Germany or even Nazi

Germany is just not a serious argument. Again, before October 7th, did you hear people at universities talking about rabid anti-Semitism on campuses across the country? Of course not. Was Claudine Gay, the president of Harvard, being portrayed as an anti-Semite? No, nobody even mentioned that possibility. This is all happening in the wake of October 7th. And it has to do with the fact that Israel is in deep trouble. And more and more people recognize that Israel is in deep trouble. And it is doing absolutely horrible things to the Palestinians. That's what's going on here. What do you think will happen if the IDF invades Rafah and slaughters another 35,000 people?

The protests will be even greater then than they are now. I mean, the idea that they're going to shut down these protests by bringing in the police is not a serious argument. This is what Edward Levy figured out in 1968-69, that bringing in the police does not help. You can't shut these problems down by beating up protesters or trying to throw them in jail if they criticize Israel. The only way you can solve these problems is by actually solving the problem that's driving the train. And that means putting an end to the Vietnam War. And in this case, it's fundamentally changing what Israel is doing in Gaza. If the Israelis stopped all the killing and went to some lengths to give the Palestinians a decent life, the protests would die,

or at least they would be greatly reduced. But what's going to happen here in all likelihood, if you listen and believe Netanyahu, is that they're going to go into Rafah, and they're going to end up killing many more civilians civilians and maybe even driving some of the Palestinians into Egypt. This is going to cause huge trouble. The protests are going to grow, but beating up on the protesters or robbing them of their first right amendments is certainly not the solution here. Is Israel an ally of the United States? No, not in any meaningful way. I mean, people in the lobby and defenders of Israel like to make the argument that it's a strategic asset. It's not a strategic asset. It's a strategic liability. It's an albatross around their neck, as I've said on numerous occasions. And from an ethical or moral point of view, everything that it's doing is abhorrent from

the perspective of American values. I mean, we're supposed to be enthusiastic about supporting an apartheid state? We're supposed to be enthusiastic about supporting genocide in Gaza? Of course not. So the idea that this is a close relationship, that we have this special relationship with Israel, that we give it unconditional aid because it's a strategic asset and it's the morally correct thing to do is not a serious argument. What we are doing is driven in large part by Israel's supporters who work overtime, who are relentless in their

efforts to get the United States to support Israel no matter what. And who have caused this mantra, Israel is our closest ally, to be spread and articulated amongst members of Congress and in the government of both parties and all ideologies? Of course, there's a whole slew of mantras that these Congress people and people in the White House spew so that they get support from the lobby. And at least the lobby doesn't go after them and try to defeat them in the next election. I mean, this is the problem that President Biden faces, right? He's up for reelection in November, and he knows full well that if he's critical of Israel

or he threatens to cut off aid to Israel, that the end result will be that he'll lose for sure in the fall. I mean, he might lose anyway, especially given where these protests are going. But if he crosses Israel or crosses the lobby, they will take revenge on him. This is just the way it works. Here's a former president of the United States, no longer living, shortly after he left the White House, talking about what he views as the proper relationship between American Jews and Israel and Israel and the United States. Let me explain something about what is called the Jewish lobby in this country. In the

first place, Jews understandably in the United States, because of what happened in World War II, because of the Holocaust, are going to put first priority on the survival of Israel. Now, as good Americans as they are, they believe that America's survival and security is directly related to Israel's. In other words, their belief is that being for Israel first means that that does not mean you're putting America second because they think it goes together. An American president, however, has to approach it in a different way, in my opinion. He's got always to think first of what is best for America. And that's true whether it has to do with the Israelis or whether

it has to do with the Irish or the Germans or what have you, or the Poles, etc. Usually what is best for America is also best for Israel and vice versa. But on occasions, for example, an American president must make a decision that does not in effect give the Israelis a blank check. And one example of that is a decision that I made. I decided early on in our administration that we were going to seek good relations with Egypt and others of Israel's neighbors. Many of my Israeli friends didn't like that because they wanted a special relationship with Israel and Israel only. But I have always said that Israel's

interests are better served to have the United States a friend of Israel's neighbors and potential enemies than to leave a vacuum which the Soviet Union would fill. What do you think? I agree with everything he said, except I wouldn't call it the Jewish lobby. I would call it the Israel lobby, because not all Jews are in the lobby, and there are Christian Zionists and others in the lobby who contribute to its influence. But otherwise,

his arguments are on the money. He pointed out that what Israel's supporters like to do is conflate America's interests with Israel's interests and say there's no difference between the two. And Nixon says quite correctly that you can't do that. They may be the same interests a lot of the time, but not all the time. And when the United States and Israel have different interests, President Nixon is going to favor American interests for all the obvious reasons. But again, most of Israel's supporters believe there's no difference between the two countries' interests. Now, what's different from Nixon's situation and the present situation is the lobby was nowhere near as powerful when Nixon was president as it is today.

The lobby has grown really powerful. It is remarkably powerful today. And it has to be remarkably powerful today because the task of defending Israel has become much more complicated, much more difficult than it was in Nixon's time. And I think Dick Nixon was in a position where he could challenge the lobby in ways that no president could today. Are there Christians in the lobby? Are there such things as Christian Zionists, say, like Speaker of the House Mike Johnson? Absolutely. There's no question about it. number of Jewish, American Jewish supporters of Israel who are disgusted with the fact that many Jews are critical, many American Jews are critical of Israel. And they say that the Christian Zionists

are Israel's firmest supporters or best or strongest supporters. These are American Jews. I've heard say this over the years. So the Christian Zionists matter. But of course, I think the core of the lobby are American Jews. But again, I want to emphasize not all American Jews by any means. Before we go, let's get back to where we started the freedom of speech. It's the first week in May. It's either exam time or graduation time at nearly every major university in the country. Where do you see this going? Does it die down in a couple of weeks?

Do these young people coalesce in the tens or hundreds of thousands in Chicago this summer, where, ironic as can be, the Democratic National Convention will be just as it was in 1968? Does it bubble up again in September if the IDF is still slaughtering innocents? What's your feel for this, Professor Mearsheimer? Well, I think that it'll be very interesting to see what happens at graduation at the various universities and colleges across the country where this is an issue. I mean, the University of Southern California, which has behaved in abhorrent ways on this whole issue, has canceled commencement. And that may happen at other schools. If it's not

canceled, my guess is there'll be lots of protests at different graduation ceremonies around the country. But then school breaks, school summer break occurs. And the question is, what happens over the summer? I think the big question will be what happens at the Democratic National Convention. It's hard for me to imagine that there's not going to be significant protest. Are they going to do that convention virtually? Is that going to be the road they go down? If they don't, I keep thinking of Chicago in 1968, and what will 2024 Chicago look like for the DNC? And it might not be pretty, but then school will start up again. And I think what it looks like when school starts up is all a function of what the Israelis are up to. And I believe that there is little chance, I hope I'm wrong, there's little chance that the Israelis will do much of anything to improve the Palestinians' lot in Gaza or in the West Bank. And therefore, the protests will start back up again next fall. And university administrators

will have a whole year in front of them trying to deal with protesters. And there'll be enormous pressure on them then, as there is now, from supporters of Israel, especially supporters who have big checkbooks. And those university presidents will be under tremendous pressure to crack down. And should they crack down, as I said before, I don't think that will work to their advantage, to the advantage of the university presidents, or to the advantage of the lobby. Professor Mears-Scharmer, thank you very much, my dear friend. Next week, I'm giving a lecture at the University of Milan. So I'll be traveling. We'll see you in two weeks. My lecture is called Taking Rights Seriously. And you can imagine what I'm going

to say about the state of the freedom of speech in America today. But thank you very much for your time today and for all of your wonderful analysis as always. My pleasure. Thank you. So tomorrow, the round table, the boys, Larry Johnson back with us, Ray McGovern at four o'clock. At five o'clock, ask the judge, but I'm going to give a mini lecture on the freedom of speech from a historical, from a philosophical, from a legal perspective, and then take your questions. Next week, I will be traveling to Milan, Italy to give the lecture that I mentioned to you. But what a day we have for you on Monday with 10 different shows coming up just about every hour. We'll post it for you shortly. Judge Napolitano for Judging Freedom. Thank you.