The University College Union on May 30 passed two boycott resolutions. Resolution 30 endorsed the call for an academic boycott of Israel by the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI). It also committed union funds to promoting it on campuses. But it did not commit the union of university teachers itself to a boycott. Resolution 31 condemned the USA and EU boycott of the Palestinian Authority (that is, the “suspension of aid”). There is symmetry here. Thirty calls for a boycott; 31 calls for the ending of a boycott. Israel’s universities, which are liberal institutions, are to be shunned; the government of the PA, which is governed by a party committed to the destruction of Israel, is to be embraced.

These resolutions are the successors to boycott resolutions passed by the predecessor academic unions, the AUT in 2005, and NATFHE in 2006. The AUT resolutions purported to justify a boycott of named Israeli universities by making specific - though false - allegations against them. The NATFHE resolution, which was much like UCU resolution 30, “invited members to consider their own responsibility for ensuring equity and non-discrimination in contacts with Israeli educational institutions or individuals and to consider the appropriateness of a boycott of those that do not publicly dissociate themselves from such policies.” The AUT resolutions were reversed following a special conference; the NATFHE resolution lapsed upon the union’s dissolution only a few days later.

The UCU resolutions are in a 2007 series of boycott resolutions. They follow the National Union of Journalists resolution, and precede the UNISON resolutions. The NUJ resolution called for “a boycott of Israeli goods similar to those boycotts in the struggles against apartheid South Africa”. One of the UNISON resolutions affirms the union’s “right and desire to act in solidarity with the Palestinian people”. These resolutions open with a very one-sided, hostile account of events in the Middle East. Britain has become the boycott nation of the world – but in relation to Israel alone. It is an ugly obsession.

There are two contexts relevant to the passing of the UCU resolutions.

First, the union context. The UCU and its predecessor unions have been failing for some time to defend the interests of their members. According to Shalom Lappin, a London University professor and longstanding Peace Now activist who has just resigned from the UCU, “the rise of the boycott campaign in British professional unions coincides with their precipitous decline as effective agents of collective bargaining and industrial democracy. The constituent predecessors of the UCU, the AUT and NATFHE, had consistently failed to address the long-term decline in academic salaries and deep under-investment in UK universities. They showed themselves to be largely impotent in their attempts to protect their members' wages and working conditions. While tuition fees have soared, the Government has made no serious attempt to correct the deterioration that threatens British institutions of higher education. It has also recently imposed deep cuts on research funding. The impresarios of the annual boycott hunt … have substituted the campaign against Israel for serious union activity addressing these issues.”

Second, the Middle East context. There are two aspects here. There is the character of the political opposition to Israel, and there is the condition of the Palestinian national movement. As for the former, the boycotters have aligned themselves with Hamas, a frankly anti-Semitic party, Hezbollah, another frankly anti-Semitic party, and President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, a frankly anti-Semitic politician. All are unreconciled to Israel’s existence, wish it harm and are committed to an account of its power and standing that is utterly dependent on classical anti-Semitic tropes and texts. As for the latter, the Palestinians have never been further from possessing the collective self-discipline, and the constructive engagement in building state institutions, that are necessary to achieving statehood. The collapse of Palestinian morale may prove irreversible. (We hope not – we remain committed to a two-state solution.) In combination, these two aspects explain the re-emergence of the “one-state solution” favoured by most boycotters – the destruction of Israel, and an implicit acknowledgment that the Palestinians are incapable of building their own state.

It has been noted, not least because the boycotters themselves loudly insist upon it, that the boycott cause has Jewish supporters. Though not advancing fresh arguments in favour of a boycott, these Jews have made two distinctive contributions to the boycott campaign. First, they maintain that as Jews they are under a moral duty to campaign for a boycott. Their Jewish conscience requires them, they believe, to side with Israel’s enemies. Second, they give cover to non-Jewish boycotters accused of anti-Semitism. An anti-Semitic position, they believe, ceases to be anti-Semitic when adopted by a Jew. These absurd, ignominious beliefs have attracted only a few Jews (the ultra-orthodox Neturei Karta, for example, and some secularists), though they have been much exploited by the boycott movement.

Are academic boycotts ever justified?

What happens when people are boycotted? The ordinary courtesies of life are no longer extended to them. They are not acknowledged in the street; their goods are not bought, their services are not employed; invitations they hitherto could rely upon dry up; they find themselves isolated in company. The boycott is an act of violence, though of a paradoxical kind – one of recoil and expulsion rather than assault. It announces a certain moral distaste; it is always self-congratulatory. “I am too fine a person to have anything to do with those people,” the boycotter says to himself. “They will have to reform themselves before I am ready to admit them back into my circle. They are indecent.” Boycotting is thus an activity especially susceptible to hypocrisy. It implies moral judgments on both boycotter and boycotted.

It follows that all boycotts are problematic. Academic boycotts are especially problematic, however. This is because they violate two important principles. One of these principles is peculiar to academic life, the other principle is best represented in academic life. The first principle is known as “the universality of science and learning”; the second principle is freedom of expression, which here implies freedom of association too. We will refer to them collectively as “the two academic principles”.

Universality of science and learning: This is the principle that academics do not discriminate against colleagues on the basis of factors that are irrelevant to their academic work. There are three justifications of this principle: the advance of science is potentially of net benefit to all mankind; the value of a given contribution to science ought to be judged on its own merits; scientists’ co-operation valuably transcends boundaries of race, citizenship, religion.

Freedom of expression: Expression is one of the principal means by which we realise ourselves. It is by speaking or writing that we discover who we are. To limit or deny self-expression is thus an attack at the root of what it is to be human. Now freedom of expression must incorporate freedom of address. It is not sufficient for my freedom of expression for me simply to be free to speak. What matters to me is that people should also be free to hear me. There should at least be the possibility of dialogue. Boycotts put a barrier in front of the speaker. He can speak but he is prevented from communicating. When he addresses another, that other turns away.

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