13th July 2008
UCU stays silent on Boycott
- UCU's Strategy and Finance committee met on Friday 27th June.
- The academic boycott was due to be discussed at this meeting.
- Unusually, UCU has not published what decision, if any, it made at this meeting.
- It is highly likely that UCU has not abandoned its boycott policy and still plans to implement Motion 25 over the coming year.
- The International Working Group, a UCU committee charged with implementing the boycott policy, is due to meet in early September.
Parliamentary Activity
- Speaking in a recent debate in the House of Lords, Lord Janner called for
"an end to the disgraceful and divisive boycotts which have been targeted at Israeli academics by unions, including the University and College Union, that do absolutely nothing to help bring peace to the Middle East. They infringe and assault the vital principle of academic freedom."
- Also commenting on the boycott, Baroness Deech said
"The UCU is an unprofessional union, and universities would do well to cease to recognise it and to deal With the alternatives."
- Baroness Deech elaborated on her comments in a Times Higher Education magazine article, which also carried UCU's response. You can read the article here.
Resignations
- UCU is failing to act to prevent a number of high-profile resignations.
- Eve Garrard, a respected philosopher and anti-boycott campaigner, resigned from UCU on the 1st of July. Her letter is on Norman Geras's blog here
- Two professors, Sarah Annes Brown and Eric Heinze have also resigned.
- Stop the Boycott still believes that UCU members can contribute most effectively to the fight against the boycott by staying inside the union.
- Commenting on these resignations Jeremy Newmark, joint co-ordinator of Stop the Boycott, said:
It is not evident that UCU is doing anything to prevent these resignations; people will ask - does the leadership care about the loss of Jewish members?
As we warned, the boycott of Israeli academics is also hounding Jews out of UCU, leaving them vulnerable and isolated in the workplace. UCU has a moral and legal responsibility to tackle this problem - so far their leadership have stuck their heads in the sand and sought to bury it in bureaucracy."
