Blanket academic boycotts of Israeli institutions are becoming very fashionable now. Fashionable means they are "no brainers." Are these colleagues really voting their conscience or do they vote yea because opposing the current fad of anti-Israelism would require for them to take an unpopular stand and make an argument, i.e., they'd need to use their brains and stand up to the new collective self-righteousness and moral purism of the Left. Sad, really.
These political resolutions politicize entire academic disciplines, they penalize dissent, they shut down debate. They fan the flames of conflict and carry the conflict into our classrooms. They are a form of intimidation.
We should ban academic associations from campus that try to politicize scholarship and academic inquiry. Let's withhold our membership dues to organizations that violate the spirit of academic inquiry.
