UCL Expresses Disgust at Israel Academic Boycott
Jerusalem----May 30...... UCL President and Provost Malcolm Grant today expressed his concern at the vote by delegates at the National Association of Higher and Further Education (NATFHE) conference for a boycott of Israel universities and academics unless they publicly dissociate themselves from the policies of the state of Israel. It echoes a resolution that was adopted last year by the Association of University Teachers (AUT), but subsequently rescinded. The largest university and college lecturers' union in Britain held a discussion and voted yesterday on a motion recommending that its 67,000 members boycott Israel academics and institutions that do not publicly declare their opposition to Israel policy in the territories. Following the vote, the union's official statement declared that "The Conference notes the continuing Israel apartheid policies, including the construction of the exclusion wall, and discriminatory educational practices. The call to consider a boycott of Israeli academics was passed with 106 votes in favor, 71 votes against and 21 abstentions. Professor Grant said: "I am deeply worried by the vote at the NATFHE conference in favour of a boycott. "I find it extraordinary that any academic union should attack academic freedom in this way. An academic boycott for political ends is in direct conflict with the mission of a university, and betrays a misunderstanding of our function. The effect of this resolution will not be confined to NATFHE, because it is in the process of merging with the AUT to create a new union, which will be contaminated from the outset by this resolution." Grant told the Israel News Agency: "We defend freedom of inquiry and of speech in universities because we believe it to be fundamental to the global dissemination and enhancement of knowledge and discovery, all of which in turn contributes to improvement of the human condition. Boycotts work in the opposite direction." "At the heart of UCL's foundation 180 years ago was the simple principle of non-discrimination against any person by reason of their means, their race, their views or their faith. That principle was radical and controversial in its time, but it is now respected by every institution worthy of the title of university. It is embedded in our Statutes at UCL, and we have no intention of compromising it today. We shall continue to stand firm against any academic boycott." British Foreign Office Minister Lord Triesman said his office regrets the decision. "We regret today's decision by the National Association of Teachers in Further and Higher Education to vote in favor of boycotting Israeli academics and institutions," Lord Triesman said in a statement. The statement continued: "We believe that such academic boycotts are counterproductive and retrograde. Far more can be obtained through dialogue and academic cooperation." Boaz Toporovsky, head of the Israel Tel Aviv University Student Union said the decision contravenes freedom of expression, a pillar of academic life. "In the enlightened and western world, freedom of expression is of utmost importance, especially in academia," he said. "What they are doing to Israel is the same racism that the apartheid regime exercised against blacks in South Africa and not otherwise as we are being accused," he added. The Israel Embassy in London said it is encouraged by messages of condemnation received from around the world. "This proposal has been rejected around the world, which sees in it manifest discrimination," a statement read. Julie Portner, a British citizen who made Aliya to Israel 24 years ago, felt deeply ashamed by her native country's decision to attempt to alienate Israel from the global academic community. "They are simply a bunch of anti-Semitic and highly naive individuals. This is not the first time that England has shown its hidden anti-Semitism, one just has to look at London's Mayor Ken Livingstone, the socialist mayor of London, who is on record for stating that Israel has always pursued, terrorized, and ethnically cleansed the Palestinians, and that Israel was established against a background of horrible crimes that continue to this very day." Portner added: "Livingston said that Ariel Sharon, Israel's prime minister, was a war criminal who should be in prison, not in office" and reminded the INA that the mayor of London's four-week suspension from office had been frozen by a High Court judge, pending an appeal. Ken Livingstone was due to be suspended after being found to have brought his office into disrepute with his comments to a reporter. Earlier he said he would fight the "attack on the democratic rights of Londoners" through the courts. He said his remark, comparing a Jewish reporter to a concentration camp guard, had been "blown out of all proportion". He has been granted a judicial review of the decision by the Adjudication Panel for England, which he said had "profound constitutional implications". The High Court judge ruled he was entitled to have the controversial sanction put on hold, while he appeals.
Abraham H. Foxman, ADL National Director, issued the following statement: "The approval of the NATFHE resolution calling for a boycott of Israeli academics and institutions represents a stunning setback for academic freedom. It is profoundly unjust for academics in the only democratic country in the Middle East - the only country where scholarship and debate are permitted to freely flourish - to be held to an ideological test and the threat of being blacklisted because of their views. No one would expect a British or American professor to have to withstand such scrutiny of their political views. Yet, when it comes to Israel a different standard applies. This shameful decision affecting British universities calls for a redoubling of the commitment to fight the boycott and other discriminatory actions against Israeli academics and institutions." "If a North Korean mathematician wants to come to a conference in Britain, we will be happy to discuss maths with her; we will not demand that she repudiates her state's constitutional claim that North Korea is a socialist paradise on earth," says David Hirsh who teaches sociology at Goldsmiths College at the University of London. "This is how it should be. Discuss integral calculus during the day; discuss politics over dinner; help her to defect, if she wants. But if an Israeli wants to come to the same conference, she would now have to sign a statement saying that she repudiates Israel's "apartheid policies". If she refuses, she won't be allowed to attend the conference, to have her journal articles considered for publication or to remain part of the global academic community. UCL was founded in 1826, UCL was the first English university established after Oxford and Cambridge, the first to admit students regardless of race, class, religion or gender, and the first to provide systematic teaching of law, architecture and medicine. In the government's most recent Research Assessment Exercise, 59 UCL departments achieved top ratings of 5 and 5, indicating research quality of international excellence. UCL is the fourth-ranked UK university in the 2005 league table of the top 500 world universities produced by the Shanghai Jiao Tong University. UCL alumni include Mahatma Gandhi (Laws 1889, Indian political and spiritual leader); Jonathan Dimbleby (Philosophy 1969, writer and television presenter); Junichiro Koizumi(Economics 1969, Prime Minister of Japan); Lord Woolf (Laws 1954 - former Lord Chief Justice of England & Wales); Alexander Graham Bell (Phonetics 1860s - inventor of the telephone); and members of the band Coldplay. "Around the world this proposal has been rejected as an act of blatant discrimination," said Israel's Ambassador to the UK, Zvi Hefetz. "As a means of promoting dialogue and coexistence in the Middle East, an academic boycott of Israel is counterproductive in the extreme." "By pursuing such a policy, NATFHE will isolate its members and their students rather than isolating Israeli academics, who are [in] the forefront of international cooperation on academic study and research, including with Palestinian universities and institutions elsewhere in the Arab world," Hefetz added.
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