3 UK universities nix boycott

The faculties of Oxford, Warwick and Sussex universities faculty has rejected he boycott of Haifa and Bar Ilan universities by Britain's Association of University Teachers, reported Israel Radio on Friday morning.

The decision by Oxford faculty to reject the boycott came in advance of the proposed May 26 emergency meeting at which it was expected that the anti-boycott faction would try to overturn the boycott. A source told The Jerusalem Post that the AUT accepted a letter with the required 25 signatures submitted by John Pike of the Open University, calling for the special session, and for a "comprehensive debate of the issue."

The controversial boycott recently came under fire, not just by pro-Israel groups, but also by British university lecturers and professors.

The first academics to resign from the AUT, Shalom Lappin and Jonathan Ginzburg, circulated an open letter calling on members to join them in breaking away from the union in protest of the boycott. "For the past several years an ugly campaign of anti-Jewish provocation has been building on the margins of the Israel hate-fest that the boycott supporters have been promoting on campuses throughout the UK," they said in the letter. "There comes a time when an organization discredits itself to the point that it can no longer be taken to stand for the values that it purports to represent. When this point is reached, one has no alternative but to disassociate oneself from it."

A letter from the New York Academy of Sciences told the AUT that its resolution, "by selecting individuals and universities for boycott, is a very clear reminder of 'McCarthy-like' tactics of accusation." The letter concluded: "We call upon the AUT to take immediate steps to rescind their regressive vote and join forward-looking academics the world over in voting for cooperation and not boycott."

Dr. Emanuele Ottolenghi, of the Middle East Center at St. Anthony's College at Oxford University, has written to AUT general-secretary Sally Hunt requesting to be included in the boycott's proposed blacklist. "Oaths of political loyalty do not belong to academia. They belong to illiberal minds and repressive regimes," wrote Ottolenghi.

"Based on this, the AUT's definition of academic freedom is the freedom to agree with its views only. Given the circumstances, I wish to express in no uncertain terms my unconditional and undivided solidarity with both universities and their faculties."

"I know many people, both at Haifa University and at Bar Ilan University, of different political persuasion and from different walks of life. The diversity of those faculties reflects the authentic spirit of academia. The AUT invitation to boycott them betrays that spirit because it advocates a uniformity of views, under pain of boycott."

"In solidarity with my colleagues and as a symbolic gesture to defend the spirit of a free academia, I wish to be added to the boycott blacklist. Please include me. I hope that other colleagues of all political persuasions will join me," Ottolenghi concluded.