Academics resist boycott of Israeli universities
600 academics call on British lecturers' union to oppose boycott of Israeli lecturers, Guardian reports
Drafted by the International Advisory Board of Academic Freedom, a body formed by Bar-Ilan University, the online letter calls on the 69,000 members of Britain's National Association of Teachers in Further and Higher Education (Natfeh) to reject the boycott motion, the Guardian said. Natfhe delegates are set to vote on the motion at the association's annual conference which kicked off on Saturday.
The Guardian letter from up to 600 academics, who although opposing "Israel's occupation of the West Bank and Gaza," wrote: "We oppose the inconsistency of blacklisting Israelis but adopting a different attitude to academics in the ... long list of other states that are responsible for equal or worse human rights abuses ... Natfhe and AUT are currently involved in a bitter dispute with university managements over pay. This boycott proposal degrades our unity at a moment when academics need to stand together."
However, the Federation of Unions of Palestinian University Professors and Employees dispatched a letter to Natfhe delegates describing the boycott motion as a "courageous initiative", the Guardian reported.
"Israeli academic institutions are implicated in various forms of oppression against the Palestinians. Israeli research institutes, think tanks, and academic departments have granted legitimacy to the work of academics who advocate ethnic cleansing, apartheid, denial of refugee rights, and other discriminatory policies against the Palestinians," the letter read.
If delegates vote for the motion, the boycott could be ephemeral as Natfhe is set to become part of the other major lecturers' union, the AUT, within less than a week.
The International Advisory Board for Academic Freedom has drafted over 500 academic in the US and Europe to lobby colleagues against the Natfhe resolution. The group's online petition had more than 4,700 signatories worldwide, the Guardian said. "Academic boycott actions are antithetical not only to principles of academic freedom but also to the quest for peaceful resolution of the Arab-Israeli conflict," the petition said.
Emanuele Ottolenghi of Oxford University's Centre for Hebrew and Jewish Studies told the Guardian that a boycott would violate basic academic freedoms. "Asking academics to state their political opinion on a specific matter as a precondition to being accepted ... is in the best tradition of Stalinism."
Stephen Rose, a founder of the AUT boycott campaign and a member of the British Committee for the Universities of Palestine, told the paper that Israeli academics had a moral responsibility to challenge their government's policies.
