DEBATES about Israel tend to stir up unusual levels of ire and vitriol, driving otherwise smart people to make poor arguments and stoop to childish taunts. This phenomenon has been on conspicuous display this week in New York City, where ten members of the city council sent a letter to the president of Brooklyn College criticising its political science department for co-sponsoring a visit by leaders of the BDS movement, an organisation calling for boycott, divestment and sanctions “against Israel until it complies with international law and Palestinian rights”. The council members were not subtle:

A significant portion of the funding for CUNY schools comes directly from the tax dollars of the people of the State and City of New York. Every year, we legislators are asked for additional funding to support programs and initiatives at these schools and we fight hard to secure those funds. Every one of those dollars given to CUNY, and Brooklyn College, means one less dollar going to some other worthy purpose. We do not believe this program is what the taxpayers of our City—many of who would feel targeted and demonized by this program—want their tax money to be spent on. We believe in the principle of academic freedom. However, we also believe in the principle of not supporting schools whose programs we, and our constituents, find to be odious and wrong. So, should this event occur, we must strongly oppose it and ask you to reconsider any official support or sponsorship.

The unveiled threat to withdraw funding from the college sparked an outcry from progressives and strong statements defending the council’s move from the Anti-Defamation League and Alan Dershowitz, the outspoken Harvard law professor. The rhetoric was quasi-apocalyptic from both sides: supporters of the department’s right to co-sponsor the panel complained that the city council was engaging in “smear tactics and [a] campaign of intimidation”, while Alan Maisel, a state assemblyman, warned of a “second Holocaust” if the discussion takes place under the endorsement of the college. In a testy email exchange on the issue, Mr Dershowitz and blogger Glenn Greenwald resorted to ad hominem attacks on each other, questioning one another’s rationality, intelligence and integrity. (Mr Dershowitz started the name calling, but Mr Greenwald happily joined in.)

Pressure on Brooklyn College has begun to subside, with Michael Bloomberg, New York's mayor, joining the editorial board of the New York Times and the progressive caucus of the city council in speaking out in support of academic freedom. On Wednesday, Mr Bloomberg used a little hyperbole of his own, comparing the complaining city councilmembers to North Korean censors. His remarks hit exactly the right note:

Well look, I couldn’t disagree more violently with BDS as they call it, Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions. As you know I’m a big supporter of Israel, as big a one as you can find in the city, but I could also not agree more strongly with an academic department’s right to sponsor a forum on any topic that they choose. I mean, if you want to go to a university where the government decides what kind of subjects are fit for discussion, I suggest you apply to a school in North Korea. The last thing that we need is for members of our City Council or State Legislature to be micromanaging the kinds of programs that our public universities run, and base funding decisions on the political views of professors. I can’t think of anything that would be more destructive to a university and its students.

The mayor is correct on both scores: the city’s heavy-handed interference with academic matters at Brooklyn College is just as misguided as the mission of BDS. The group rejects the idea of Israel as the homeland for the Jewish people and insists on a one-state solution in which Israel as we know it effectively ceases to exist. There is a lot to argue with in these proposals, and there may be better ways to structure a debate about them, but there is no good reason to suppress the department’s right to co-sponsor this discussion. When the event at Brooklyn College convenes this evening, protests and mayhem are sure to accompany Judith Butler and Omar Barghouti, the BDS representatives. As the panelists and audience debate settlements, human rights and whether Israel is an apartheid state (it isn’t, by the way), a conceptual tangle will lurk in the background: what is academic freedom, exactly?

Mr Dershowitz rejects the claim that the city council’s letter threatens academic freedom: it is the members of the political science department, not city pols, who constitute the real threat. How so? Here is how he makes the case:

I know that if I were a student at Brooklyn College today, I would not major in political science for fear that my support for Israel and my opposition to BDS might prejudice me in the eyes of professors whose department has endorsed BDS, thus discriminating against my point of view in the marketplace of ideas. How could I be sure they wouldn't discriminate against my point of view in grading or recommending students? This is the real issue in the hullabaloo over the decision by the Brooklyn College political science department to cosponsor and endorse the BDS campaign at Brooklyn College.

One might ask how rescinding the sponsorship at this point—the move Mr Dershowitz proposes—would make any difference. The department has already voted to sponsor the event (but not to endorse it, a conflation Mr Dershowitz makes consistently) and has, by his reasoning, created an atmosphere of ideological purity on the question of Israel/Palestine where pro-Israel dissenters are unwelcome. The (supposed) damage is done. But let’s assume that a shift at this late date would lift that ideological cloud. Mr Dershowitz cites a few examples of students whose academic freedom would be rescued:

One political science student at Brooklyn College said she was afraid to criticize her department because "that's going to put a target on my back." Other students talked about a "chilling effect" that the department's decision would have on them. And yet another student said that she had "an uncomfortable feeling" about raising her hand and arguing "with a professor who voted for it" and who tried to justify his vote in the classroom.

To put it nicely, this is hokum. A “target on my back”? Please. Academics are not in the business of punishing students who disagree with their political viewpoints. Professors court a diversity of views in the classroom and take an implicit oath to welcome everyone on an equal basis. There are different philosophies as to whether professors should reveal or conceal their political positions when facilitating class discussions, but no one makes the claim that faculty members must remain shills for neutrality outside the classroom.

This is, however, the absurd conclusion we draw from Mr Dershowitz’s argument: professors should resist the urge to profess on (or even sponsor a panel discussion about) a controversial matter lest one of their students with a differing point of view feels alienated as a result. Weighing in on the contraceptive mandate in the health-care bill might offend a Catholic student. Sponsoring a panel discussion on drone strikes might rub a pacifist the wrong way. Arguing in favour of Marx’s critique of capitalism might make a budding libertarian a little sheepish. And yes, a Brooklyn College student who favours a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict may be peeved by the presence of BDS on her campus. But none of these cases count as an assault on students’ academic freedom. Academics write books, give talks, and publish blog posts for The Economist. They also sponsor panel discussions, sometimes by speakers they roundly disagree with. If students are frightened off from a debate so easily—an exchange the department explicitly invites in this case—they would be advised to get a little spine. They’re going to college in Brooklyn, for God's sake.