UK lecturers call for moral review of Israeli college links

By IRNA,

London : British lecturers and academics have overwhelmingly supported a call for a review of links with Israeli colleges and universities.


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A motion was backed at the University and College Union (UCU) annual conference in Manchester, northern England on Wednesday, urging its 120,000 members to “consider the moral and political implications of educational links with Israeli institutions.”

It called for discussions about the occupation of Palestine “with individuals and institutions concerned, including Israeli colleagues with whom they are collaborating.”

The motion was carefully devised in the light of legal warnings the union received last year after previous attempts to back a boycott Israeli academics and institutions.

Academics from Britain’s largest lecturers union argued that it was not a new boycott, but a show of their right to debate the issues facing Palestinian colleagues and, separately, links with Israeli institutions.

“We are talking about not just impediment but serial humiliation and that’s the order of the day in Palestine,” said Tom Hickey of Brighton University, which proposed the motion.

“In the face of accusations of anti-semitism and legal threats we refused to be intimidated.

We will protect the union from legal threats but we will not be silenced,” Hickey told delegates.

At its inaugural conference last year, the lecturers backed calls by Palestinian trade unions to join a “comprehensive and consistent boycott” of Israeli academic institutions, but the motion was never implemented after interference by the UK government.

But according to the Guardian newspaper Thursday, the UCU was again being accused by the Israeli lobby of launching a new academic boycott.

“Boycotts of any kind do nothing to promote peace and moderation in the Middle East, as well as undermining the academic freedom and integrity of British academic institutions,” Lorna Fitzsimons, joint head of the Stop the Boycott campaign was quoted saying.

A statement from the vice-chancellors’ umbrella group, Universities UK, also said they believed a boycott advocating the severing of academic links with a particular nationality or country, is at “odds with the fundamental principle of academic freedom.”

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