Last Friday, Cornell University’s Student Assembly voted to sever its partnership with the Technion, Israel’s leading technology institute. Reports from the meeting described a tense and crowded session in which university president Prof. Michael Kotlikoff was jeered as he attempted to speak and eventually left the room. The accusation repeatedly voiced against him was stark: accountability for “genocide.” The term was invoked not as a claim requiring proof, but as a fact whose denial marked one as morally suspect. Those who questioned it were treated less as interlocutors than as obstacles.

The vote is advisory. Resolutions passed by the Student Assembly are forwarded to President Kotlikoff, who has the authority to implement or reject them. But the significance of what happened in that room does not depend on the outcome. A resolution that cannot bind the university can still shape the climate in which it operates.

Student protest has long played a vital role in expanding the moral horizons of democratic societies. From civil rights struggles to opposition to unjust wars, campus activism has often served as an early warning system, drawing attention to suffering and mobilizing public conscience. Precisely for this reason, however, the ethical force of protest depends on its ability to sustain argument rather than replace it. When moral urgency hardens into........

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