Campaign Update 10
17th August 2007
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Head of Field Ops Appointed
- Stop the Boycott has appointed Paul Simpson as Head of Field Operations.
- Paul will be working to roll out the campaign nationally through coordinating with local UCU branches, academics and students.
- Paul is currently the Labour Party's head of Corporate Communications, and has also worked for two MPs.
- Poju Zabludowicz, Chairman of BICOM, the organisation spearheading Stop the Boycott together with the Jewish Leadership Council said:
"We are delighted to welcome Paul to the campaign. We are sure that he will be able to repeat the success that he enjoyed at the Labour Party with us at the Stop the Boycott campaign."
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Stop the Boycott in Israel
A delegation of campaign staff and advisors, led by Jewish Leadership Council Chief Executive and campaign co-chair Jeremy Newmark travelled to Israel this week.
The delegation included Rick Nye (Director of Populus Research and Stop the Boycott Campaign Pollster) and newly appointed Head of Field Operations Paul Simpson (see above)
They briefed Israeli universities at a meeting convened by the International Advisory Board for Academic Freedom.
Jeremy also briefed Rafi Barak, head of the Israeli Government's Interdepartmental Task Force on Boycotts.
Commenting on the meetings, Jeremy Newmark said: "As we gear up for the start of the new academic year in September it is important that all international resources are properly coordinated."
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New National Postgraduate Committee anti-boycott rep
- Andre Oboler, an international PhD student from Australia, was elected as a Project Officer for the National Postgraduate Committee (NPC).
- His remit is to promote links between the NPC's affiliates and Israeli academics, as a means of opposing the proposed academic boycott of Israel.
- His election came after Dr Jon Pike, a lecturer at the Open University and a founder of Engage, spoke at the NPC's conference.
- Commenting on the appointment, Andre said:
"The NPC has opposed an academic boycott of Israel since before the AUT called for their 2005 boycott, and we continue to oppose it. We oppose it because boycotts do not further higher education in the UK, only collaboration and positive engagement can do this. In this new role I hope to facilitate such engagement, not only mitigating the damage the UCU are causing, but hopefully also achieving positive academic engagement between Israelis, Palestinians and UK academics as well."
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Hadassah Director-General responds to boycott debate
- After the British Medical Journal's debate on the Academic Boycott, Professor Shlomo Mor-Yosef, Director-General of Hadassah, a medical organisation in Israel wrote a letter to the BMJ
- In the letter, which appeared on the BMJ website, he highlighted examples of collaborative health projects between Hadassah and Palestinians.
- Prof. Mor-Yosef wrote:
"We do not let politics into our premises when we save lives of Palestinian babies with severe heart defects. We ignore political aspects when we conduct dozens of collaborative research and clinical projects with Palestinian physicians in a variety of medical and health areas."
