Inside Higher Ed: British Union Drops Boycott Call
For several years now, British faculty unions have been voting in various ways to encourage members to boycott Israeli academics and universities — and ignoring anti-boycott pleas and resolutions and requests from scholarly societies, university presidents and academics from Britain, the United States and in some cases the Palestinian Authority. On Friday, the union announced an abrupt reversal: Based on legal advice, calls for the boycott will be dropped.
A statement from the University and College Union said that after the latest vote by union leaders, in May, the group’s leaders sought legal advice to make sure the organization wouldn’t face court challenges. The lawyers said that pushing for a boycott would be illegal. “It would be beyond the union’s powers and unlawful for the union, directly or indirectly, to call for, or to implement, a boycott by the union and its members of any kind of Israeli universities and other academic institutions; and that the use of union funds directly or indirectly to further such a boycott would also be unlawful,” the lawyers said. As a result, the union is calling off plans for a tour of local chapters to encourage them to support a boycott.
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