The decision of UK academic union to boycott Israel threw into sharp relief the difference between one’s possession of an academic title and his or her ability for general reasoning.The Arab-Israeli conflict being a textbook property dispute, where Israelis claim the title to the land from which their ancestors were expelled long ago, and which was taken over by Arabs during Arab empire-building exercise, with further entanglements due to land purchases, British mandate, division by the UN, Arab non-recognition of the legality of the division, and Arab wars against Israel, the issue is not clear-cut. Is Palestine an occupied Arab land? Or an occupied Jewish land? Only 99 British Ph.D.s had sufficient reasoning ability to refuse to be drawn into having an opinion about something so entangled, and where an opinion would be of no value to either science or scholarship. 158 showed complete lack of the ability to reason by voting “yes.”At least two lessons should be...(Read Full Post)