Professor Jacobson recently reported that the Cornell Student Assembly voted to table indefinitely a Resolution to Divest from companies doing business in Israel.

And student Jacob Glick says that it was the right thing to do.

If there is any issue over-discussed at Cornell, it is the ongoing crisis between Israel and Palestine. Last Thursday, this oftentimes-heated campus conversation reached a climax as hundreds of people watched the Student Assembly vote to indefinitely table Resolution 72, which called for the University, currently “a complicit third party in human rights abuses and violations of international law,” to divest from certain companies profiting from the aforementioned offenses as they relate to Israel’s occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

The result, as you have surely heard, was pandemonium. Amid expletive-filled accusations of stifled free speech, supporters of the Resolution 72 stormed out of the Memorial Room and disengaged — physically and metaphorically — from a discussion in which they ought to be involved.

…It is clear to me that those who stormed out of the Memorial Room are not ready for serious dialogue. Instead of taking the rejection of their resolution as a signal to change course — to attempt to understand that not everyone who supports Israel and Cornell’s connection with Israel is not a serf-like ideologue held in thrall to Benjamin Netanyahu and Sheldon Adelson — the rhetoric from its supporters has only intensified. When the entire pro-Israel community is smeared as enablers of “settler colonialism” (Castle’s words, not mine), it is difficult to imagine any conciliatory overtures on the horizon. As resolution supporters launched a verbal barrage against the “victors,” they undermined their legitimacy as partners for peace, and ensured that, on that divisive afternoon, no one truly won.

The S.A. has a duty not simply to give voice to students, but to guard against vitriol and rancor that seeks to penetrate campus discourse. Both supporters and opponents of Resolution 72 agree that its most important implications lay not in its legislative dictates, but in its ability to plunge Cornell into an ideological wasteland where one is either pro-boycott or pro-occupation. As I wrote two months ago, this would force students to choose sides rather than choose peace. The S.A. chose not to accede to the confrontational demands underlying Resolution 72, and instead sent an unambiguous message that this was not an issue it deemed productive to campus discourse.

To achieve peace and true justice in Palestine, Cornell must engage in the open, honest and vigorous debates needed to mold intellectually versatile students who will be able to advocate for — and, one day, defend — a more just future for Palestinians and Israelis. Publicity stunts in front of the student assemblies prove to the world not that American youth are ready to push for peace, but that we have given up on finding consensus on one of the thorniest geopolitical issues of the modern era.