Scholars and Public Debates

In her excellent, tightly reasoned "Against Academic Boycotts" (Summer 2007), Martha Nussbaum notes that the "main force of the boycott" is directed against "individual members of the [Israeli] institutions," who are accused of not condemning their "government as much as they might have," among other faults. Although Nussbaum finds this rationale and the boycotting of individuals "both implausible and deeply repugnant to the values of academic life," she also notes "that we can only debate this questioning in a philosophically responsible way if we first offer a principled account of the responsibilities of scholars to engage in public debates." What follows is an attempt to answer Nussbaum's implicit question about the responsibility of scholars; an answer that also provides a footnote to her critique of the proposed boycott from a somewhat different perspective.