The Israel Lobby and US Foreign Policy

John J. Mearsheimer is the R. Wendell Harrison Distinguished Service Professor of Political Science and the co-director of the Program on International Security Policy at the University of Chicago, where he has taught since 1982. He graduated from West Point in 1970 and then served five years as an officer in the U.S. Air Force. He then started graduate school in political science at Cornell University in 1975. He received his Ph.D. in 1980. He spent the 1979-1980 academic year as a research fellow at the Brookings Institution, and was a post-doctoral fellow at Harvard University's Center for International Affairs from 1980 to 1982. During the 1998-1999 academic year, he was the Whitney H. Shepardson Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York, and in 2003 he was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Professor Mearsheimer has written extensively about security issues and international politics more generally. He has published three books: Conventional Deterrence (1983), which won the Edgar S. Furniss, Jr., Book Award; Liddell Hart and the Weight of History (1988); and The Tragedy of Great Power Politics (2001), which won the Joseph Lepgold Book Prize. He has also written many articles that have appeared in academic journals like International Security, and popular magazines like The Atlantic Monthly. Furthermore he has written a number of op-ed pieces for the New York Times dealing with topics like Bosnia, nuclear proliferation, American policy towards India, the failure of Arab-Israeli peace efforts, and the folly of invading Iraq.

Finally, Professor Mearsheimer has won a number of teaching awards. He received the Clark Award for Distinguished Teaching when he was a graduate student at Cornell in 1977, and he won the Quantrell Award for Distinguished Teaching at the University of Chicago in 1985. In addition, he was selected as a Phi Beta Kappa Visiting Scholar for the 1993-1994 academic year. In that capacity, he gave a series of talks at eight colleges and universities. In 2003, he was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Stephen M. Walt is Robert and Rene Belfer Professor of International Affairs. He holds a BA in international relations from Stanford University and an MA and PhD in political science from the University of California, Berkeley. He was previously on the faculties of Princeton University and the University of Chicago, where he served as Deputy Dean of Social Sciences. He is the author of The Origins of Alliances, which received the 1988 Edgar S. Furniss National Security Book Award; Revolution and War; and Taming American Power: The Global Response to U.S. Primacy. His recent publications include: "An Unnecessary War?" (Foreign Policy, Winter 2002-2003); "Beyond bin Laden: Reshaping U.S. Foreign Policy" (International Security, Winter 2001-2002); and The Enduring Relevance of the Realist Tradition (Political Science: State of the Discipline).