Last update - 02:33 30/05/2007
British lecturers to vote on boycott of Israel
By Assaf Uni
LONDON - Representatives of Britain's University and College Union (UCU) will meet in Bournemouth today to vote on an academic boycott of Israel. The resolution, submitted by the universities of Brighton, East London and Birmingham, would require lecturers not to cooperate with Israeli institutions. It also mandates efforts to prevent European Union research funds from going to Israel.
Prior to the boycott vote, which is slated to take place at around 6 P.M. Israel time, the delegates will vote on two related proposals. One would impose various restrictions on the UCU's ability to declare an academic boycott, and the other would require any boycott decision to be submitted to a referendum of all the union's 116,000 members.
Ronnie Fraser, who heads Britain's Academic Friends of Israel association, said yesterday that it is hard to predict the outcome of the boycott vote, as supporters and opponents appear to be fairly evenly matched.
Throughout the three days of the UCU conference, Israeli and Arab students have manned a booth showcasing cooperation between Israeli and Palestinian universities in an effort to sway opinion against the boycott proposal. The booth was organized jointly by Bar-Ilan University's International Advisory Board for Academic Freedom and the Fair Play Campaign Group, a British Jewish organization.
British lecturers' unions have voted to impose an academic boycott on Israel twice before. In 2005, the Association of University Teachers (AUT) approved a boycott, but the decision was overturned a month later. In 2006, the National Association of Teachers in Further and Higher Education (NATFHE) did the same, but that decision became invalid shortly thereafter when NATFHE and AUT merged to form the UCU.
The proposal to restrict the UCU's ability to impose boycotts essentially mimics the restrictions that the AUT adopted when it revoked its boycott decision in 2005. Among other things, the resolution would require the UCU to hold a dialogue with any institution it is considering boycotting; it would also require the boycott decision to obtain support from international institutions.