Columbia history professor Richard Bulliet spent three weeks in Israel last spring, he told a packed room at an ominously named event — “War With Iran?” — hosted by the university’s Middle East Institute. “Iran was always coming up as an ‘existential threat,’” he said.
Bulliet was in Israel evaluating the country’s Middle East programs. He seemed disconcerted by what he found: There was very little study of this so-called “existential threat.” The designation was not backed by any rigorous academic examination of the country on the receiving end of the accusation.
“To my recollection,” he said, “there were five professors in Israel who were… specialists on Iran.”
