The Drezner is going to the Middle East!!
Your humble blogger will be a bit more focused on the Middle East for the next ten days. That’s because I’ll be going on the road to Israel and the Occupied Territories as part of IR summer camp a fact-finding trip sponsored by the good people at Academic Exchange. I tried talking the ...
Your humble blogger will be a bit more focused on the Middle East for the next ten days. That’s because I’ll be going on the road to Israel and the Occupied Territories as part of IR summer camp a fact-finding trip sponsored by the good people at Academic Exchange.
I tried talking the folks at MTV into bringing along a camera crew to film a Jersey Shore–type of show:
ME: This is an awesome trip. You’ll get lots of good footage!!
MTV: Who else is going?
ME: A bunch of other IR professors.
MTV: No, no, what are their Jersey Shore monikers?
ME: Oh, well, let’s see, there’s LJ, Bobby, Debbie, Marty, Mad Skillz Mikey, Steph, Goldie, Work of Art, A-Down, KupKake, D-Lake, Valentino, B-Woww, and "The Drezner," among others.
MTV: Cool names!! Whatcha gonna be doing?
ME: Meeting with high-ranking Israeli, Palestinian and civil society leaders to get a nuanced sense of what’s really going on.
MTV: Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz…….
Well, their loss.
Seriously, as embarrassing as it is for a Jewish kid raised in Connecticut to admit, this will be my first visit to Israel. The trip will hopefully afford me an opportunity to be co-opted by the Israel Lobby get a better understanding of how Israelis and Palestinians think about the situation over there. I’m sure I will learn a lot – and I’ll be sure to provide the readers of Foreignpolicy.com plenty of updates about B-Woww’s binge drinking what I’ve learned along the way.
Shalom!!
Daniel W. Drezner is a professor of international politics at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University and co-host of the Space the Nation podcast. Twitter: @dandrezner
More from Foreign Policy

Saudi-Iranian Détente Is a Wake-Up Call for America
The peace plan is a big deal—and it’s no accident that China brokered it.

The U.S.-Israel Relationship No Longer Makes Sense
If Israel and its supporters want the country to continue receiving U.S. largesse, they will need to come up with a new narrative.

Putin Is Trapped in the Sunk-Cost Fallacy of War
Moscow is grasping for meaning in a meaningless invasion.

How China’s Saudi-Iran Deal Can Serve U.S. Interests
And why there’s less to Beijing’s diplomatic breakthrough than meets the eye.