Podcast appearances and mentions of Bess W Heyman

Perry World House at the University of Pennsylvania staged a webinar asking "Can COP26 Save the World?" Moderator for the event was the Bess W. Heyman President's Distinguished Professor and Chair of Philosophy, Michael Weisberg, who is also the Director of Post Graduate Programs and Perry World House. The speakers were the head of the Environmental Migration, Social Vulnerability and Adaptation Section at United Nations University, Dr Koko Warner, and a visiting fellow to Perry World House, Mauricio Rodas Enjoy "Music for a Warming World". Support the show: https://www.patreon.com/climateconversations

A new government has taken power in Israel and Benjamin Netanyahu is no longer the prime minister. So what will this new government focus on? What does this mean for the Palestinians, and what does it mean for the relationship between the United States and Israel? Dr. Ian Lustick, Professor of Political Science at the University of Pennsylvania and the Bess W. Heyman Chair in the Political Science Department joins KYW Newsradio In Depth to break down how Netanyahu lost power and what the shift in government means for the future of Israel and Middle Eastern politics. Dr. Lustick is the author of several books including his latest, 'Paradigm Lost: From Two-State Solution to One-State Reality.' Find out more about the book here: https://paradigmlostbook.com/   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

In our latest episode, Ian Lustick joins us to talk about the idea of a two-state solution to the Israeli/Palestinian conflict. Listen in as we dive into how we might think about the paradigm of a two-state solution in historical perspective, and the ways in which history matters when we look at issues in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and beyond. Ian Lustick is the author of an important book, Paradigm Lost: From Two State Solution to One State Reality, which is the focus of our conversation today. He holds the Bess W. Heyman Chair in the Political Science Department of the University of Pennsylvania, where he teaches Middle Eastern politics, comparative politics, and computer modeling. Paradigm Lost is an important book, and a profoundly challenging one. It presents an argument that not everyone will agree with. The idea that a two state resolution to the Israel-Palestine conflict is no longer possible is not really a new one: it’s been a quarter-century since the Oslo agreements, and pessimism seems to reign. But Lustick offers two powerful but potentially controversial ideas about the failure of the two state solution. First, he insists that it is not just about the inability to implement a good idea since the ‘90s. Instead, he places the blame directly on Israel’s settlement project and its “territorial maximalism,” which has its roots in the history of the entire twentieth-century conflict. He points to Zev Jabotinsky’s notion of the “Iron Wall,” the idea that Arabs would only negotiate with Jews after they had been defeated - which had the paradoxical outcome that repeated Israeli victories emboldened the Israeli leadership so they were less likely to come to the negotiating table. He also emphasizes the collective memory of the Holocaust as a profound factor in Israeli society, and the pro-Israel lobby in the United states, both of which embolden Israel’s hawkish parties and make the Israelis less likely to come to negotiate a two state solution. Secondly, Lustick — who once was a proponent of the two state solution, now says that it is a distraction from reality. He argues that there is, and has long been, just one state between the Jordan river and the Mediterranean sea. The pursuit a of a two state solution, he posits, is an unrealizable dream when the real need is to push for equal rights and citizenship for all people living in this territory which is effectively one state. It is, as he puts it, a paradigm shift: borrowing the language of the history of science and Thomas Kuhn in particular, he talks about the fundamental structures of how we look at the world. If we replace the paradigm of a two-state solution with a new paradigm, a one-state reality, it totally changes the way that we look at the conflict, the questions we ask, and the kinds of resolutions we might strive towards. Again, not everyone will agree with Ian’s analysis, but we hope the book, and our conversation today on the podcast, will help generate conversations about Israel, the Palestinians, and the way we look at the future of the region.

Interviewer: MATTHEW BERKMAN. In his book Paradigm Lost, IAN LUSTICK argues that negotiations for a two-state solution between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River are doomed and counterproductive. Israeli Jews and Palestinian Arabs can enjoy the democracy they deserve but only after decades of struggle amid the unintended but powerful consequences of today's one-state reality. In his discussion with political scientist Matthew Berkman, and basing his argument on the decisiveness of unanticipated consequences, Lustick shows how Zionism's partially successful Iron Wall strategy for dealing with Arabs, an Israeli political culture saturated with a specific way of remembering the Holocaust, and the Israel lobby's dominant influence on American policy toward the Arab-Israeli conflict, combined to scuttled efforts to establish a Palestinian state alongside Israel. Yet, he maintains, the death of the two-state solution has also unintentionally set the stage for struggles that, along with new international pressures such as the BDS movement, might ultimately establish a more broadly inclusive democracy in the single state of Israel. Ian Lustick holds the Bess W. Heyman Chair in the Political Science Department of the University of Pennsylvania.

Dr. Ian Lustick teaches courses at the University of Pennsylvania on Middle Eastern politics, comparative politics, political identities and institutions, techniques of hegemonic analysis, the expansion and contraction of states, and on relationships among complexity, evolution, and politics. He is a recipient of awards from the Carnegie Corporation, the National Science Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Social Sciences Research Council, the Middle East Peace Foundation, and the United States Institute of Peace. Before coming to Penn, Professor Lustick holds the Bess W. Heyman Chair. Before coming to Penn he taught for fifteen years at Dartmouth College and worked for one year in the Department of State. His present research focuses on the demise of states and the implications of the disappearance of the option of a negotiated “two-state solution” to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, He is a past president of the Politics and History Section of the American Political Science Association and of the Association for Israel Studies, and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. In this episode, we discuss differing prospects for a solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

The George Washington University’s Marc Lynch, director of the Project on Middle East Political Science, speaks with Ian Lustick, professor of political science and Bess W. Heyman Chair at the University of Pennsylvania. Lustick is a past president of the Politics and History Section of the American Political Science Association and of the Association for Israel Studies, and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. He is the author of Trapped in the War on Terror (2006), For the Land and the Lord: Jewish Fundamentalism in Israel (1988), Unsettled States, Disputed lands: Britain and Ireland, France and Algeria, Israel and the West Bank-Gaza (1993), and State Building in British Ireland and French Algeria (1985). Lynch and Lustick discuss the Israeli and Palestinian peace process, and Lustick’s recent article “Two-State Illusion.”

The George Washington University’s Marc Lynch, director of the Project on Middle East Political Science, speaks with Ian Lustick, professor of political science and Bess W. Heyman Chair at the University of Pennsylvania. Lustick is a past president of the Politics and History Section of the American Political Science Association and of the Association for Israel Studies, and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. He is the author of Trapped in the War on Terror (2006), For the Land and the Lord: Jewish Fundamentalism in Israel (1988), Unsettled States, Disputed lands: Britain and Ireland, France and Algeria, Israel and the West Bank-Gaza (1993), and State Building in British Ireland and French Algeria (1985). Lynch and Lustick discuss the Israeli and Palestinian peace process, and Lustick’s recent article “Two-State Illusion.”