What Foreign Policy Academic Experts Say

Read "Inside the Ivory Tower" by Daniel Maliniak, Amy Oakes, Susan Peterson and Michael J. Tierney in Foreign Policy, March/April 2007. (subscription required.)

"For the survey, we attempted to contact all international relations faculty at 1,199 four-year colleges and universities in the United States. The schools include all national research universities, master’s-granting institutions, and liberal arts colleges identified by U.S. News & World Report, as well as seven military colleges. When the results were tallied, 1,112 scholars, more than 41 percent of all international relations professors in the United States, participated in our study."

the overwhelming majority of international relations scholars (66 percent) agree that the Israel lobby has too much influence over U.S. foreign policy. Just 20 percent of respondents disagree. But their beliefs about the Israel lobby do not appear to trickle down to their students. Our concurrent survey of nearly 700 students in introductory international relations courses at a dozen universities reveals that students were less likely to believe that the Israel lobby exerts too much influence over U.S. foreign policy after taking the course than before.

Ninety percent of the respondents thought it unlikely or very unlikely that Iraq would have established a democracy in 10 to 15 years without the war, and 85 percent thought it still unlikely in spite of the war.