Standing Room Only

The University of Chicago campus, and CIR students especially, were looking forward to hearing John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt discuss their latest book on the strength of the Israel lobby on American foreign politics. The book has garnered controversy and retaliatory opinion pieces, perhaps reflected in part by Sunday's Chicago Sun Times editorial on the rise of global anti-semitism.

The topic generated so much interest on campus that all of the seats were taken long before the 6 pm takeoff. A group of students, myself included, gathered outside, next to an open window, to hear the discussion. You know you're desperate for a lecture when you're willing to stand outside a building, craning to hear the words of a prominent realist for over an hour.

Because of the incideniary nature of the topic and the relative fame of its presenters, the lecture was well worth listening to, even from the outside. Intellectual events of all sorts - political, literary, cultural, musical - -seem to be in high demand in Hyde Park, which is part of what makes this such a wonderful community to live in. My attempts to view a jazz concert in Frank Lloyd Wright's Robie House Saturday were also thwarted, although I did catch a really good live set on the midway. You apparently need to wake up pretty early in the morning to get a seat at a UChicago jazz performance! (Or book reading...)

Some friends and I also made our way to the Checkerboard Lounge a legendary blues and jazz club on Harper Ave. The south side of Chicago is especially famous for its jazz and blues tradition, and I hope the jazz festival becomes an annual event as promised.