The emerging calls across the landscape of US higher education for boycotts of Israeli academic institutions present complex questions and challenges. Yet, US-based efforts to boycott other governments accused of human rights abuses are not new and have proven effective in confronting such violations. This paper will explore some of the historical similarities and differences between the budding attempts over the last five years aimed at ending Israeli military occupation and those of 20-30 years ago directed at apartheid South Africa. I will explore some of the critical ethical questions that surround these contested issues, including what an academic boycott aimed at the Israeli state might or should look like. What lessons can American academics interested in debating the merits of a cultural boycott learn from earlier campaigns? A recently released counter-protest by the Israeli government, its US consulates, and many of its supporters in the US against the current and varied boycott efforts have expressed a deep concern with these campaigns’ intentions and methods. Israeli authorities have even gone so far as stating that such non-violent forms of resistance represent an “existential threat” to the Jewish State. Drawing from debates in print and on campuses over the last five years among supporters of an academic boycott and between supporters and those opposed to such efforts, this paper will outline some of the crucial questions—ethical and tactical—that these various issues raise. This paper will compare the debates, movements, and discourses of/on human rights that arose during the cultural boycott of South African apartheid.