Scholarly and Scientific Boycotts of Israel: Abusing the Academic Enterprise

Veritas vos liberabit, chanted the scholastics of yesteryear. The truth will set you free, echo their latter-day counterparts in the academy. Universities like themselves to be perceived as places of culture in a chaotic world, protectors of reasoned discourse, peaceful havens for learned professors roaming orderly quadrangles and pondering higher thoughts-a community of scholars seeking knowledge in sylvan tranquility. The real world of higher education, of course, is not quite so wonderful. Instead of a feast for unfettered intellectual curiosity, much of the modern academy is dominated by curricular deconstructionists who disdain western civilization, people who call themselves multiculturalists but, in fact, are radical social reformers pushing their own narrow and sometimes extremist political agendas. On the other hand, today, instead of being presented a bustling marketplace of ideas by professors basking in the warmth of academic freedom, students are confronted by increasingly hostile learning forums