Over the last decade, the numbers of Chinese and Indian students at American universities have substantially increased. At the same time, faculty and students have campaigned to boycott China and India over the status of Tibet and Kashmir, to reject Chinese and Indian funding, and to shun collaboration with individual Chinese and Indian researchers. There have been organized assaults upon Chinese guest speakers and propaganda campaigns inciting students to purge universities of Chinese or Indian “influence,” including that of American citizens with a Chinese or Indian background. When students of Indian background object, they are informed that, wittingly or not, they are part of a global Hindu conspiracy.

Of course, none of this has happened. It is almost inconceivable that any of it would happen. All of this, however, has been directed against the State of Israel, and against American Jewish students, since the inception of bds, the campaign for “Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions” against the Jewish state. This dubious selectivity is one unique aspect of bds. Another is the scale of its ambition. Generally, the introversions of Social Justice stop well before the water’s edge. There are global issues, most notably and vaguely the environment, but bds is the only form of campus activism to attack a single state internationally—and a single group domestically.

bds activists seek to curtail the freedom of others.

bdsseeks to transform the atmosphere of university intellectual and social life, in order to effect changes in