U.K. academics to back sweeping boycott of Israeli universities

The largest university and college lecturers union in
Britain is likely to decide shortly to recommend that
its 67,000 members boycott Israeli lecturers and
academic institutions that do not publicly declare
their opposition to Israeli policy in the territories.

The boycott motion, which was drafted by the southeast
region of the National Association of Teachers in
Further and Higher Education (NATFHE), will be brought
to a vote at its annual national conference, which
will be held May 27-29. It comes about a year after
the last boycott by British lecturers.

In April 2005, the British Association of University
Teachers (AUT) decided to impose an academic boycott
on Bar-Ilan and Haifa universities, but subsequently
reversed the decision. The two lecturers organizations
are slated to merge at the beginning of June.

Unlike the previous boycott, which targeted two
specific institutions, the current motion relates to
all lecturers and academic institutions in Israel. Now
that the University of Haifa has threatened the AUT
with a lawsuit, the NATFHE motion is more cautious:
instead of recommending the lecturers union boycott
Israeli institutions, it calls on the union to suggest
its members carry out the boycott.

“The conference invites members to consider their own
responsibility for ensuring equity and
non-discrimination in contacts with Israeli
educational institutions or individuals, and to
consider the appropriateness of the boycott of those
that do not publicly dissociate themselves from such
policies,” the NATFHE motion states. It also
encourages lecturers to hold meetings on the issue on
campus.

’Apartheid policies’

The motion explicitly says NATFHE will recognize
Israeli policies, while at the same time denigrating
them as “apartheid policies, including construction of
the exclusion wall and discriminatory educational
practices.”

Ronnie Fraser, a NATFHE member who heads an
organization called Academic Friends of Israel, said
he didn’t think any decisions made at the annual
conference would have an immediate effect on the
policies of the merged lecturers association, but his
group called on NATFHE not to discuss the boycott
altogether.

“Academic work should not be blocked on political
grounds,” wrote Fraser in the name of the
organization. Discrimination “on the grounds of
nationality is pernicious,” he said, calling academic
discourse “crucial in keeping channels open to build
opportunities for peace.”

In addition to the boycott motion, the annual
conference will also discuss a motion condemning the
“outrageous bias” of the British government in
opposing Hamas’ victory in the Palestinian elections
and stating that NATFHE will “continue to help protect
and support Palestinian colleges and universities in
the face of the continual attack by Israel’s
government.”

In the past decade, the only country whose academia
NATFHE has considered boycotting is Israel.

Zvi Ziegler, a professor at the Technion-Israel
Institute of Technology in Haifa who heads the Israeli
Inter-Senate Committee of the Universities for the
Protection of Academic Independence, said that if
passed, the motion would provide justification for
individuals to boycott Israeli academic institutions.

“The decision may not be binding, but it will be the
union’s recommendation to all its members,” said
Ziegler. “It provides legitimacy for people who want
to boycott Israel.”

Having learned their lesson last year, Israeli
lecturers have already begun organizing meetings and
conferences to speak out against academic boycotts.

The Inter-Senate Committee, which was established in
2001 with the original purpose of preventing a change
in the structure of Israeli universities, had all
Israeli universities pass resolutions condemning
academic boycotts and calling on academic
organizations abroad - including in Britain - to pass
similar resolutions.

“We want to bring about a situation in which leading
organizations say academic boycotts are improper,”
said Ziegler. "When they are faced with a leading
academic body, organizations will hesitate to make a
decision like this again
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