The Israel Lobby and American Democracy:

Join Ian S. Lustick and Michael J. Koplow for a critical discussion on the role of the pro-Israel lobby in American politics.

Lustick is coauthor of the new book Israel's Lobby: America in the Grip of a Foreign Power. He argues that the lobby has captured key parts of U.S. policymaking, distorting American interests abroad and narrowing the range of acceptable speech at home. Koplow, a leading analyst of U.S.-Israel relations, will respond to many of the book's central claims. Together they will debate how much influence the lobby really has, and what it means for U.S. foreign policy and democratic debate.

Ian S. Lustick is the Bess W. Heyman Chair, Emeritus, in Political Science at the University of Pennsylvania. He is a former State Department expert on Israel-Palestine affairs and a founder and past President of the Association for Israel Studies.

Michael J. Koplow is Chief Policy Officer at Israel Policy Forum and a senior research fellow at the Shalom Hartman Institute of North America. His analysis appears regularly in Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, and The Atlantic.

Moderated by Jeffrey Green and Ibrahim Bakri, Director and Associate Director of the Andrea Mitchell Center for the Study of Democracy.