While the boycotts of Israeli institutions of higher learning by scholarly organizations, university departments, and individual faculty members are ostensibly intended to “end the occupation” or avoid “complicity in apartheid,” they have so far proved to have only a minimal impact on Israeli academia, and the chances that they will in any way contribute to changes in the Jewish state’s policies are negligible. What then, asks Martin Kramer, do their proponents seek to accomplish?

The academic boycott of Israel is actually meant to isolate and stigmatize Jewish academics in America. It serves the aim of pushing Jewish academics out of shrinking disciplines, where Jews are believed to be “overrepresented.” That is how diehard supporters of [boycotts] find academic allies who have little interest in Palestine, in fields like American studies or English literature. For these allies, it is not about the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories. It is about the presumed Jewish occupation of American academe by Jewish faculty and administrators.

Kramer illustrates the point with the hypothetical example of a Jewish doctoral student who receives an invitation to participate in a conference at an Israeli university:

If she does go to Israel, someone might point a finger at her: she’s a boycott buster; she’s acted outside the bounds of her discipline; she’s been unprofessional. If she is up for appointment or tenure, does she want that conference in Israel on her CV? What if someone on the academic committee sees himself as a boycott enforcer, and spots it? Will this torpedo her candidacy or promotion?

She can turn down the invitation, say nothing, and become a Jew of silence. . . . But perhaps even silence isn’t enough if you are in the humanities. . . . So a third option is to show some virulent hostility yourself—especially if you are a Jew, and therefore naturally suspected of secretly being a Zionist.

Today . . . Jews are regarded not as targets of prejudice but as bearers of privilege. And in much of academe, especially the humanities and social sciences, student demand is weak and falling, full-time academic jobs are rare, and budgets are being cut. For every tenured position, the competition has become cutthroat. And where competition is cutthroat, anything goes. Academe now seethes with struggles over diversity, ethnicity, gender, and race, and it would be naïve to think that Jewish “overrepresentation” isn’t an issue anymore.

Yesterday, Israel’s Channel 12 reported that Israeli representatives have been involved in secret talks, brokered by the United Arab Emirates, with their Syrian counterparts about the potential establishment of diplomatic relations between their countries. Even more surprisingly, on Wednesday an Israeli reporter spoke with a senior official from Syria’s information ministry, Ali al-Rifai. The prospect of a member of the Syrian government, or even a private citizen, giving an on-the-record interview to an Israeli journalist was simply unthinkable under the old regime. What’s more, his message was that Damascus seeks peace with other countries in the region, Israel included.

These developments alone should make Israelis sanguine about Donald Trump’s overtures to Syria’s new rulers. Yet the interim president Ahmed al-Sharaa’s jihadist resumé, his connections with Turkey and Qatar, and brutal attacks on minorities by forces aligned with, or part of, his regime remain reasons for skepticism. While recognizing these concerns, Noah Rothman nonetheless makes the case for optimism:

The old Syrian regime was an incubator and exporter of terrorism, as well as an Iranian vassal state. The Assad regime trained, funded, and introduced terrorists into Iraq intent on killing American soldiers. It hosted Iranian terrorist proxies as well as the Russian military and its mercenary cutouts. It was contemptuous of U.S.-backed proscriptions on the use of chemical weapons on the battlefield, necessitating American military intervention—an unavoidable outcome, clearly, given Barack Obama’s desperate efforts to avoid it. It incubated Islamic State as a counterweight against the Western-oriented rebel groups vying to tear that regime down, going so far as to purchase its own oil from the nascent Islamist group.

The Assad regime was an enemy of the United States. The Sharaa regime could yet be a friend to America. . . . Insofar as geopolitics is a zero-sum game, taking Syria off the board for Russia and Iran and adding it to the collection of Western assets would be a triumph. At the very least, it’s worth a shot. Trump deserves credit for taking it.