Workplace Blog

CAUT Boycott: Consider boycott of Israeli universities

Britain’s University and College Union has moved to implement an academic boycott of Israeli universities, and some university presidents in this country have already issued pronouncements condemning such a boycott. However, this is a serious issue deserving proper consideration by the academic community.

It is important to remember, first of all, that boycotts are not about individuals. They are tactics used to change a specific policy — in this case, the illegal military occupation of the West Bank and Gaza and the stifling consequences the occupation has had on Palestinians, including academics and students.

Since 2000, Israeli policies have prevented countless Palestinians from exercising their right to education. Travel restrictions make it impossible to attend a university unless you live within walking distance. Roadblocks, checkpoints and curfews disrupt schedules and make it impossible to plan the academic year and hold examinations.

Now foreign aid is being withheld and tax revenues as well since Israel refuses to transfer taxes collected from occupied Palestinians. As a result, universities cannot get funds and many students cannot afford tuition fees. Professors have gone unpaid for many months and Israel is denying visas to foreign academics who wish to teach in Palestinian universities, including Palestinians who have lived and taught there for many years, but who hold a foreign passport.

Yet in 40 years of occupation, no Israeli university has stood up for the rights of Palestinian universities.

Some of the undersigned participated in a boycott of Soviet universities designed to pressure the Soviet government into allowing Jewish academics to emigrate to Israel and other countries. Now a boycott of Israeli universities to pressure the Israeli government into allowing the Palestinians their right to education needs to be considered.

Raja T. Abboud
Professor Emeritus
University of British Columbia
The Lung Centre
Vancouver General Hospital

Richard Bevis
Emeritus Professor of English
University of British Columbia

I. Ekeland
Canada Research Chair in Mathematical Economics
University of British Columbia

V. Raoul
Professor Emerita
French & Women’s Studies
University of British Columbia

E. Wayne Ross
Curriculum Studies
University of British Columbia

E. Seaton
Graduate Studies
York University

R. Ward
Electrical & Computer Engineering
University of British Columbia

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.