President Obama and the Future of Greater Israel will be the topic of a presentation by political scientist John Mearsheimer on Thursday, March 24, at 7 p.m. in the Bone Student Center Old Main Room. Mearsheimers’s presentation is part of the Robert G. Bone Distinguished Lecturer Series, presented this spring by Illinois State University’s Department of Politics and Government. The event is free and open to the public.
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. His 2007 book, The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy, was a New York Times best seller and has been translated into 19 languages.
Mearsheimer examines the influence and power exerted by the Israel lobby in American politics. He contends that it is clearly in the American national interest to solve the Israel-Palestinian conflict by allowing the Palestinians to have a country of their own. However, he notes that no American president, including Barack Obama, has been able to put significant pressure on Israel to stop building settlements and agree to give the Palestinians a viable state.
Mearsheimer has researched and written extensively about security issues and international politics. His other books include Conventional Deterrence, Liddell Hart and the Weight of History, The Tragedy of Great Power Politics and most recently, Why Leaders Lie: The Truth about Lying in International Politics.
The Robert G. Bone Distinguished Lecturer Series was established by the late Illinois State President Robert G. Bone (1956-1967). Shared by the departments of History, Politics and Government, and Sociology and Anthropology, it enables these departments to bring distinguished scholars to Illinois State to deliver a series of public lectures and to meet with faculty and students.
