“The Zionists bareley (sic) showed up,” crowed one pro-boycott activist attending the University and College Union’s annual Congress in the British seaside town of Bournemouth. I won’t comment here - go instead to our friends at Engage who continue to expose the stench of antisemitism in this corner of British academia.
Arieh Kovler of the Fair Play Campaign Group is attending the 2009 UCU Congress. He takes up the story.
BRICUP, the British organisation behind the boycott of Israeli academics, held a fringe meeting at UCU Congress yesterday in Bournemouth.
No sign yet of a major campaign in the UCU, the British academic union, to highlight the current plight of Burmese opposition leader, Aung San Suu Kyi. We’ll keep you posted. Meanwhile, the UCU leadership is now denying earlier reports that some of the union’s trustees have gone to court this week to obtain an injunction to stop the union from going ahead with another debate about boycotting Israelis - while, as usual, not telling anyone what is going on. Update: read the new UCU motion and David Hirsh’s take on it here. Here we go yet again.
The boycotters are proffering advice on the upcoming elections to the national Executive of the Universities and College Union in the UK. Read David Hirsh’s take here.
It’s complicated, it’s exasperating, it’s a sorry tale of far left lunacy, and if I didn’t have Jon Pike to decipher it all for me, I would be feeling very confused.
Thankfully, Jon makes one thing very clear: “The 2008 round of the boycott debate is over, and the boycotters have lost. Again.” Go to Engage for his explanation of why.
I’ve followed, from a distance, the debate in the UK on a possible academic boycott of Israel and no other country pretty much from the start. I’ve paid as much attention to it as I could, I believe in the vital importance of trade unions and if I didn’t have some faith in the power of argument I wouldn’t be writing here.
Via Engage, which has valiantly marshalled both the arguments and the bodies to confront the UCU’s academic boycott, comes news that court action is imminent.
Subscribe to the Z Word blog via RSS - click on the orange button below. For more information on using RSS, please read this helpful guide.
RSS