Even if it’s obvious that Engage is, without question, the best source for information about the latest academic boycott initiative in the UCU (as well as the initiatives in 2005, 2006 and 2007…), I still want to encourage readers of this blog to check out the latest offerings over there.

Here’s James Mendelsohn with a very interesting piece on the dispute within the Huddersfield branch of the UCU over a speaking invitation to the Israeli anti-Zionist academic, Ilan Pappe, who recently relocated from Haifa University - an institution he repeatedly slandered with a baseless accusation of harassment - to the University of Exeter in the UK. Pappe is an advocate of the genocide formula - otherwise known as the “one state solution” - and so the sponsorship of his talk by a UCU regional committee implies, as Mendelsohn argues, his general approval by the union.

One wonders what the UCU, at either regional or national level, would make of Pappe’s scheduled appearance - alongside assorted antisemites, Islamists and totalitarian leftists - at the University of California, Irvine, at a May conference entitled “Never Again? The Palestinian Holocaust.” Perhaps best not to answer that one.

Another must read is this piece by Jon Pike, of the UCU National Executive Committee. Says Jon, by way of conclusion:

“So to summarise: we’re facing dozens, perhaps hundreds of resignations (again), we’re likely to end up in court - possibly losing a claim under the RRA - and all this on a policy on which we’re out of line with the mass membership.”