The ASA Boycott
By Leaving aside the question of whether the target is justified, what puzzles me about this kind of academic boycott is not only how it’s supposed to be justified but even how it can work in theory. Would the civil rights movement have triumphed had people stopped reading Faulkner and Welty and refused to invite them to speak at universities? Does holding them responsible for Jim Crow make any kind of moral sense? I honestly don’t get it.