(José Niño, Headline USA) Newly obtained emails reveal Jeffrey Epstein orchestrated a behind-the-scenes campaign to discredit two prominent political scientists whose research exposed the influence of pro-Israel lobbying on U.S. foreign policy, according to a report by Dropsite News.
In March 2006, Harvard Kennedy School published a working paper by political scientists John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt examining how pro-Israel advocacy groups shaped U.S. foreign policy.
The paper described a coalition of philanthropists, think tanks, and advocacy groups that routinely pulled American policy away from national interests. “No lobby has managed to divert U.S. foreign policy as far from what the American national interest would otherwise suggest,” the scholars wrote in the paper, which the London Review of Books ran.
The backlash was immediate and severe. News outlets labeled the authors antisemites, and the Anti-Defamation League denounced their work as an “anti-Jewish screed.” The Kennedy School removed its logo from the paper and distanced itself from the research.
In 2006, two academics, John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt, wrote a paper called “The Israel Lobby,” which argued that a loose group of Israel supporters used their connections and financial resources to tilt US foreign policy in Israel’s direction.
One of them, Stephen Walt,…
— Ryan Grim (@ryangrim) November 26, 2025
Now, emails obtained by whistleblower organization Distributed Denial of Secrets reveal Jeffrey Epstein’s hidden role in orchestrating that backlash. The convicted sex offender gave feedback on talking points to discredit the professors and used his extensive network to spread allegations of antisemitism.
Dropsite News noted that during the first week of April 2006, Epstein received multiple drafts of an attack piece by Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz, who also served as Epstein’s defense attorney. Dershowitz accused Mearsheimer and Walt of recycling “discredited trash” from neo-Nazi websites. Epstein responded: “terrific…congragulations (sic).”
Hours later, Dershowitz’s assistant asked Epstein to help distribute the attack piece. Epstein confirmed: “yes I’ve started.”
Despite holding no formal role, Epstein wielded significant power at Harvard. He donated over $9 million between 1998 and 2008 and positioned himself as a patron for high-profile academics including Dershowitz and Harvard president Larry Summers. Epstein also served as trustee for billionaire Leslie Wexner’s family office, which donated nearly $20 million to the Kennedy School between 2000 and 2006, per an announcement by The Harvard Gazette.
The campaign worked devastatingly well. The Chicago Council on Global Affairs canceled a scheduled talk by the pair in 2007. Other institutions demanded any appearances be “balanced” by pro-Israel speakers. Their mainstream platform narrowed for years.
“I’m not surprised to see these emails, because Dershowitz and Epstein were close and both have a passionate attachment to Israel,” Mearsheimer told Drop Site News.
During the same week Epstein coordinated attacks on the professors, he was also strategizing with Dershowitz about destroying the credibility of a 16-year-old girl who had accused him of sexual abuse.
The attacks continued after Mearsheimer and Walt expanded their work into a book in 2007.
Jeffrey Goldberg, writing in The New Republic, compared their perspective to Osama bin Laden’s and proclaimed it “the most sustained attack… against the political enfranchisement of American Jews since the era of Father Coughlin.”
In 2016, a decade after The Atlantic refused to publish the original article under public pressure, Goldberg was named its editor in chief.
José Niño is the deputy editor of Headline USA. Follow him at x.com/JoseAlNino
