Pro-Israel group opposes move to boycott illegal settlement university

New academic boycott plan meets swift resistance
28/03/2008 by Leon Symons in Jewish Chronicle - excerpts

Attempt by the University and College Union national executive to reintroduce an academic boycott of Israel...has brought a swift communal response. 

The Stop The Boycott campaign, launched to defeat last year’s proposal — successfully — has been reactivated, and communal leaders have spoken out strongly against the UCU executive.

A motion called “Palestine and the Occupation” by Tom Hickey of the Socialist Workers Party, and seconded by UCU president Linda Newman, who made anti-boycott statements prior to her election last year, will be tabled at the union’s conference, due to be held in Manchester in May.

Jon Pike, chairman of the antisemitism-monitoring group Engage, who will be joining the UCU national executive after its conference, said: “This will drag the union away from its primary function, which is improving pay and conditions for its members, into a damaging debate about a boycott that is opposed by the majority of British academia. I agree with its general secretary Sally Hunt about that.”

Dr Pike said he was “perplexed” by the apparent volte-face of Linda Newman, who sent Engage a letter last year in which she pledged to seek increased contact between Israeli and Palestinian academics, saying that an earlier call for a boycott was “ineffective”.

Henry Grunwald, president of the Board of Deputies, said: “STB will once again co-ordinate the community’s efforts with those partners inside the UCU to overturn these flawed proposals.”

Lorna Fitzsimons, co-chair of Stop the Boycott, said: “Its own legal advice, which it has refused to publish, said the boycott it wanted last year was illegal and discriminatory, so much so that it kicked out the motion.”

Jeremy Newmark, co-chair of STB, said: “boycotts are bad for the Palestinians.”

Full report in Jewish Chronicle