Israeli universities face boycott
Claire Yeo looks at the proposed boycott of Israeli insitutions by university teaching unions
It has been relatively under-reported that many of our university lecturers have been actively engaging in an academic boycott targeted against the state of Israel. While we have all been worrying about the duration of the AUT’s recent “assessments boycott,” which has had us all up in arms about finalists’ prospects of graduating on time, it seems that there have been some other interesting developments occurring within the university teachers’ union. Few of us may actually be aware of another policy of the union’s sister organisation NATFHE for which Israeli academics, rather than British students, have had to bear the brunt.
Up until May last year, the AUT itself had been actively boycotting the Israeli universities of Haifa and Bar-Ilan, with the intention of extending this to include the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. It had claimed that these institutions had been complicit in the government’s “abuse” of Palestinians. This boycott involved tactics such as refraining from any form of academic or cultural cooperation, collaboration or joint projects with Israel; suspension of subsidies and funding to these institutions; and supporting Palestinian academic and cultural institutions directly without requiring them to partner with Israeli counterparts.
Although the AUT’s special council has since voted to revoke all such motions of this nature in favour of preserving academic freedom (a dubious principle to advocate considering the obvious detrimental impact the boycott has on academic freedom), the union’s new partner and sister union, NATFHE, still has in place a motion inviting its 69,000 members to consider a boycott of academics and universities which do not distance themselves from Israeli government policy.
The union, which has very recently merged with the AUT to form a larger umbrella organisation UCU (the University and College Union), has accused the government of pursuing what it has called “apartheid policies” in Israel which have been likened to those of the apartheid regime of South Africa in the 1980’s. The union has also condemned what it cites as “discriminatory educational practices” in Israeli higher education.
While the boycott is said to have expired with NATFHE’s amalgamation into UCU, many see this as merely a “technical matter” that does not indicate a change regarding Israel, and should not constitute grounds for assuming a victory for freedom of speech over the boycotts. The AUT, by contrast, have totally reversed this policy, stating, “the AUT does not endorse this policy and is strongly advising its members not to implement it.”
The actions of both unions are highly contentious. Several academics, including Oren Ben-Dor from the University of Southampton, have argued that the AUT’s overturning of the boycott is a “missed opportunity to awaken Israelis, and in turn Palestinians, to the urgent need to engage in a debate about all the skeletons in the cupboard.”
The effectiveness of a boycott as a means of improving dialogue is highly questionable, and is seen by many as merely counterproductive. Supporting trade unionists in Israel and Palestine which are working for peace seems, instead, a much more proactive way of improving the situation. Yet the central issue is not whether the unions are correct in their accusations, but whether or not they legitimately should attempt such a boycott. Indeed, the move seems, in many ways, little more than a blatant denial of freedom of academic speech, a principle that is central to the integrity of academic unions. As AUT’s general secretary, Sally Hunt, has stated, “UK higher education has had a long and proud tradition of defending academic freedom. The struggle to maintain academic freedom whenever it is under threat is one that the AUT will always support and which will always guide our work.”
Surely, therefore, their actions against the Israeli academics run counter to this claim
While we can accept that the AUT are now taking a more proactive approach to the Israel-Palestine conflict, the NATFHE are not. “By pursuing such a policy, NATFHE will isolate its members and their students rather than Israeli academics,” as Israeli Ambassador to the UK, Zvi Heifetz, has commented. Again, it would seem the wrong people are being unfairly targeted.
