Why Academic Boycotts Are Wrong

By DENA S. DAVIS

Calls for an academic boycott of Israel and for universities to stop investing in Israeli companies have struck me with special force because I spent last spring as a Fulbright fellow in Israel, teaching bio-ethics at Bar-Ilan University, outside Tel Aviv. I take issues of complicity very seriously, and thus I tend to be sympathetic to boycotts of regimes -- or corporations -- whose behavior is especially disturbing. Further, I think calls for boycotts by private citizens are