Bird Watching

A military attack on Iraq "is not in America's national interest," declared a September 26 New York Times advertisement coauthored by "realist" John J. Mearsheimer, the R. Wendell Harrison distinguished service professor of political science, and signed by 33 other scholars.

The ad irked Georgetown professor Robert J. Leiber, who wrote a lengthy critique of it—or, more precisely, its "flawed application" of realist foreign policy—in the October 18 Chronicle of Higher Education. But more than half the ad's signatories weren't realists, Mearsheimer and coauthor Stephen M. Walt, who recently left Chicago for Harvard, pointed out in a November 15 Chronicle "Counterpoint"—rather scholars who believe "an invasion of Iraq is the wrong war in the wrong place at the wrong time."

The ad's impact beyond academe is debatable. Nicholas Lemann argued in the September 16 New Yorker that the perspective of Mearsheimer and other international-relations scholars "isn't being considered in Washington."

Perhaps Mearsheimer et al. can get some publicity pointers from the "glamour queen of moral philosophy": Martha Nussbaum, the Ernst Freund distinguished service professor in law & ethics, who made the September 29 Chicago Tribune Magazine cover story. Author Julia Keller's profile of the "loved or hated but impossible to ignore" Nussbaum lauded her professional triumphs and relayed some tangles from her personal life-and left it to readers to join the fans or the detractors of "the Martha show."

Fans of the GSB likely noted that Northwestern's and Chicago's B-schools captured No. 1 and 2 (respectively) in BusinessWeek's rankings issue. Observed Chicago Tribune business columnist David Greising, "We keep wanting them to come out swinging. To set aside this...genteel mutual respect and really talk some trash about each other." Greising got no satisfaction from Chicago's Edward Snyder or Northwestern's Dipak Jain. "This is good for the city," Snyder said. Shrugged Jain: "No. 1, No. 2-they're both high." When pressed, Jain ceded, "I'd give it to them." Did you hear that, BusinessWeek?