-Caveat Lector- NY TIMES May 14, 2006 A British Teachers' Union Weighs a Boycott of Israeli Teachers By ALAN COWELL
LONDON, May 13 Britain's biggest union for college and university teachers plans to ask its 67,000 members to consider boycotting Israeli lecturers who do not publicly dissociate themselves from what it called Israel's "apartheid policies." The language is from a resolution to be put before the National Association of Teachers in Further and Higher Education at its annual conference in Blackpool from May 27 to 29. The move has reopened a fiery debate that seized another college union, the Association of University Teachers, last year. In response to appeals from 60 Palestinian organizations, the Association of University Teachers voted in April 2005 to boycott two Israeli universities, saying it would bar faculty members from Haifa and Bar-Ilan Universities from taking part in academic conferences or research with British colleagues. Less than a month later, the association voted to overturn the boycott when numerous advocates, including a group of Nobel laureates, argued that university campuses in Israel enjoyed vigorous political debate and were not the most appropriate institutions to boycott. This year, however, the Association of University Teachers, with 40,000 members, plans to merge with the larger National Association of Teachers in Further and Higher Education, just after its conference in Blackpool. The contentious resolution is one of two relating directly to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The first, concerning Hamas's victory in Palestinian elections, enjoins British academics "to continue to help protect and support Palestinian colleges and universities in the face of the continual attacks by Israel's government" and to "contact the Palestinian Authority government to reaffirm that support." That resolution accuses Britain of displaying "outrageous bias" against Hamas. The European Union, the United States and Israel consider Hamas a terrorist organization with which they refuse to have dealings, especially so long as it declines to recognize Israel and renounce violence. It is the second resolution up for approval that will revive last year's arguments over the boycott of Israeli academicians. The second resolution "notes continuing Israeli apartheid policies including construction of the exclusion wall, and discriminatory educational practices." And it "invites members to consider their own responsibility for ensuring equity and nondiscrimination in contacts with Israeli educational institutions or individuals, and to consider the appropriateness of a boycott of those that do not publicly dissociate themselves from such policies." David Hirsh, a lecturer in sociology at Goldsmiths College, University of London, and a member of a group called Engage, established last year to fight the boycott call, said the new resolution was "nastier" than the 2005 campaign because it was asking the National Association to "legitimate private, personal boycotts." "It's a sanctioning of private discrimination," he added. Shalom Lappin, a philosophy professor at King's College, London, and another supporter of Engage, called the boycott call "a form of inquisition, of McCarthyism." "No other national group is being identified in this way," he said in a telephone interview. "There's no call for a boycott of American academics if they don't stand up against the occupation of Iraq." The union's leaders declined to discuss the boycott resolution before the meeting. But the British Committee for Universities of Palestine, a group which advocates a boycott, says on its Web site (www.bricup.org.uk) that Israeli policy, including the construction of a so-called security barrier, "is making everyday life, to say nothing of teaching and research, ever more difficult for our Palestinian colleagues." It said Israeli academics supporting their Palestinian counterparts were "few in number (less than 1 percent) and institutionally, Israeli universities are at worst active supporters of Israeli state policy, at best in passive compliance with it." "Especially in the current climate of rising Islamophobia and anti-Semitism, boycott is among the clearest and least violent forms of action in resisting occupation and injustice at an international level," the committee's Web site said. "An academic boycott is both a personal and a collective act made in solidarity with our Palestinian colleagues whose academic freedom is currently denied." It was not clear whether the National Association's conference would approve the resolution. Additionally, it remained uncertain what effect the approval of a boycott resolution would have on the proposed merger of the National Association with the Association of University Teachers just a few days after the conference. Zvi Heifetz, the Israeli ambassador in London, said in a statement that the boycott call would distance members of the National Association "from other academics, and particularly from those working towards coexistence between Israelis and Palestinians." "British academics are at the forefront of educational cooperation in the Middle East," he said. www.ctrl.org DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER ========== CTRL is a discussion & informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic screeds are unwelcomed. Substanceânot soap-boxingâplease! 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