Well, the Governors of St. Peter’s College Oxford think so, anyway. They just passed the following resolution:

The Governing Body of St Peter’s College strongly disapproves of Motion 25, passed at the meeting of the Congress of the University and College Union on 28 May 2008. The Governing Body regards as highly objectionable the unfounded allegations of “apparent complicity” in the “killing of civilians” levied against “most of the Israeli academy” in the UCU motion. These allegations are damaging to constructive exchanges and collaboration between colleagues and Universities in Britain, the Middle East, and other countries, and they bring British Universities into disrepute.

The Governors clearly see what the UCU leadership refuses to: that the motion incites support for a boycott by urging its members to reconsider links with their Israeli colleagues because of their “apparent complicity” with the occupation.

On the letters page of The Independent, though, the boycotters are happily purveying their standard mix of evasion and denial. Tom Hickey , the proposer of the motion, insists that what was called for was not a boycott but merely an invitation “to reflect on the appropriateness of continued formal links with Israeli academic institutions that are complicit in the occupation.” Rather than explaining the difference and, for that matter, detailing what this “complicity” actually involves, Hickey opts instead to end with a mini-lecture on the importance of a labor union’s commitment to “justice. ” Always refreshing to hear such sentiments from a member of the “We Are All Hezbollah Now” Socialist Worker’s Party.

But the grand prize for duplicitious argument surely goes to John Chalcraft of the LSE. Says he: “Far from blocking dialogue, the UCU motion has helped provoke debate. Far from hijacking the union, supporters of the motion advance by persuasion and claims of conscience.” According to this eyewitness account of the actual debate on Motion 25 by Eve Garrard, no-one was allowed to speak against it! Perhaps “provoking debate”, for Chalcraft, is a euphemism for pushing the sordid politics which underlie the motion.