The animating reason has less to do with Israel and much more with popular distaste with academia's left-leaning tendencies, particularly since the 1990s, combined with the Columbia protests having been incredibly poorly handled by all parties.
Obviously, if left-leaning academia was actually impaired by it's tendencies then right-leaning academia would overtake it. Alas, there is not a better-known school in America than Harvard. The auspices of free market competition have not funded the construction of more conservative schools. The liberal academics have American innovation by the balls, and the market is okay with that.
The good news is, that's a very American process. Your school can be dirty, base, vile, poorly-sorted, distasteful and frugal, but completely validated if your results are superior to your peers. Attempting to force any other outcome is a subversion of the market's will, tooled by the instruments of a planned economy.
> particularly since the 1990s
You know, I recall a certain jingoist American conflict before the 1990s where students protested nationwide. It didn't do much, adults also blamed "both sides" for handling it poorly, but it did ultimately prove the students right when America lost the war. Goes to show how quickly things can change, but I'll leave that as food for thought instead of bringing up Saddam's WMDs.
That’s the point. Before the 1990s, student protests tended to find purchase across a broad set of the population. Since then they haven’t.
Are there Israel-specific factors amplifying this response? Of course. Is it enabled by a deeper loss of legitimacy for academia? Absolutely.