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Editors' Interview with Michael Walzer

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Editors' Interview with Michael Walzer [50] JOURNAL OF POLITICAL THOUGHT INTERVIEW [with Michael Walzer] Michael Walzer is a prominent American political theorist and public intel- lectual. A professor emeritus at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princ- eton, New Jersey, he is co-editor of Dissent, an intellectual magazine that he has been affiliated with since his years as an undergraduate at Brandeis University. He has written about a wide variety of topics in political theory and moral philosophy, including political obligation, just and unjust war, nationalism and ethnicity, economic justice, and the welfare state. He has played a critical role in the revival of a practical, issue-focused ethics and in the development of a pluralist approach to political and moral life. Wal- zer’s books include Just and Unjust Wars (1977), On Toleration (1997), and Spheres of Justice (1983). We sat down with him in May for a wide- ranging conversation on the interplay between personal identity and po- litical thought, the state of political theory today, and the overlapping chal- lenges posed by religion and ethnicity for the contemporary nation-state. I. Identity and the Political interested in left-issue politics. Theory License My teachers at Brandeis told me I should apply to graduate school JPT: What first drew you to the in political science, because it field of political theory? wasn’t really a field and you could do whatever you wanted. Whereas MW: When I was a history major in history you would be commit- at Brandeis, I was first interested ted to archival research, in politi- in studying the history of ideas. At cal science you could write about the same time, I was always very politics, you could write political engaged in politics. Brandeis was biographies, you could do law and the place where the ‘60s began in politics, you could do sociology the ‘50s. There was a lot of political and politics. activity on campus coinciding with the first desegregation decisions JPT: As a graduate student did you from the Supreme Court. We had know you wanted to work on nor- an organization back then called mative political theory? “SPEAC,” Student Political Educa- tion and Action Committee. There MW: Not yet. My dissertation was wasn’t a lot of action, but it was SDS on the Puritans. I wanted to write [Students for a Democratic Soci- about revolution, but my French ety] before there was SDS. I also wasn’t good enough and my Rus- came from a family that was very sian was nonexistent, so I had VOL. 1, ISSUE 1 [51] to write about the English Revolution, than the academic writing that I had which meant writing about Calvinism. I done. A turn to normative political theo- was at that point very committed to the ry was a way of combining the two. If you proposition that the way to study politi- look at the essays in Obligations, my first cal theory was through history. book, you would be looking at my first I had a Fulbright between college and effort to write normative political theory. graduate school, and I continued to read I remember trembling when I gave my sixteenth century history with Geoffrey first normative paper, which was the lead Elton at Cambridge. I came to Harvard piece in what became Obligations. Stuart having already started work on what Hampshire was very kind and said good became my doctoral dissertation on the things, and he encouraged me to keep Puritan Revolution. But once I was in the doing that sort of thing. Government Department at Harvard, I I recently wrote an autobiographical es- realized that theory was what was inter- say for Nancy Rosenblum at Harvard, de- esting to me. scribing what I call the “political theory license.” Political theorists do not have to JPT: What changed your attitude to- pretend to be objective or non-partisan. wards political theory? I could write a paper that could be aca- demically respectable defending equal- MW: I came to Princeton for my first po- ity or socialism. I could give a course on sition as an Assistant Professor teaching equality and the only requirement was the history of political theory, because that I acknowledge the strongest argu- ments against my positions and deal with them in class. At the time, I would write Political theory should be the an essay and I would decide afterword work of people who have a whether to publish it in Dissent or in an academic journal. If I published it in an political position that they academic journal I would have to add 25 “ want to defend.” footnotes and muddy the prose a little bit, qualify certain things that would be unqualified inDissent . But essentially, that was the only political theory that normative political theory let me do that. was taught back then in the Government Most of my writing was either from Department. But once I was at Princ- a social democratic position or from a eton, I began to talk to the philosophers Jewish perspective. I think political the- here. Bob Nozick was here and Stuart ory should be the work of people who Hampshire was a visiting professor at the have a political position that they want time—he in particular was very impor- to defend. There are certain rules about tant to me. While I was teaching, things academic discourse which shape how we were happening in the world. I was writ- defend a position, but that seems to me ing regularly for Dissent, and I went south what political theorists should be doing. in 1960 when sit-ins first began. When I wrote about the sit-ins in Dis- JPT: What is the role of your cultural and sent and about the doctrine of nonviolent political identity in guiding your work as protest, I found that what I wrote in Dis- a scholar? When Jürgen Habermas was sent was more interesting and more fun recently asked to comment on the politi- [52] JOURNAL OF POLITICAL THOUGHT cal situation in Israel, he responded that had grown up at a time when if you were it “is not the business of a private Ger- a Jew you would not be promoted at any man citizen of my generation.” Is political American university. So they became theory a universal project, or is it a form a certain kind of universalist, which I of interpretation within one’s tradition? though was not the right kind of univer- salism because it was borne out of fear. MW: I can understand why a German of I had one professor who we all thought his generation wouldn’t want to criticize was a Polish count, and then his broth- the Jews, although I’m not sure if that is er—who was a mathematician in Cali- the right response. Habermas as a sympa- fornia—published a memoir, in which thetic critic of Israel might be very help- he describes his Bar Mitzvah, and that ful. But there is something to Habermas’s was how we found out that our professor sentiment. For example, I oppose hate wasn’t a Polish count [laughter]. But there speech regulation in America but I favor wasn’t an inkling of anything. And I had it in Germany. There is a historical reason several professors like that, who were ex- to say that holocaust denial should not be posed in odd ways. Of course we relished tolerated in Germany. But in the United the exposure. But that affected the way States, it is just some nonsense that we they thought and wrote about the Shoah. have to put up with. When I give lectures in Germany, I am JPT: Many have described you as a com- always introduced as a “Jewish Ameri- munitarian. Do you think communitar- can,” which doesn’t happen when I speak ian is a helpful label? in France. When I finish my lectures in Germany there is always a group of young MW: I’ve written a piece called “The people who pretend to ask questions. Communitarian Critique of Liberalism” One will say that he worked in a hospital which is an effort to define how I am a in Tel Aviv during the Iraq war, or visited communitarian and how I am not a com- 1 a kibbutz in the Galilee, or volunteered munitarian. As a definition of my posi- for service in the Negev. It is so touching, tion I would say I’m a very old fashioned it is as if they want me to forgive them social democrat. But another way of de- and they of course have nothing to be for- fining my own politics is that I’m a liberal given for and I have no authority to for- social democrat with regard to national politics and I’m a communitarian with give anybody. These people have a special regard to Jewish politics. One of the fea- view about the world and if they become tures of liberalism is that it creates a space political theorists it will certainly influ- where there can be many communities ence their work, as it should. For me, the and many different communitarianisms. way I write about the nation-state is in- For this reason I have been quite criti- fluenced by the fact that I believe the Jews cal of Michael Sandel’s effort to describe have a right to a nation-state of their own. a communitarianism that is national I’m sure that cultural factors and per- in scope. His communitarianism is re- sonal factors have an influence on aca- publican, and it’s the republicanism of demic work.
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