September 2007
In
the annals of dubious achievements a “first” by academics in a democratic
country: On May 30, British academics representing the Union of Colleges and
Universities (UCU) voted in favour (158-99, 17 abstentions) of boycotting their
professional (Israeli) peers.
Capping a five-year campaign by a gang of fanatically anti-Israel supporters of
the Palestinian cause, the boycott’s advocates present as protesters of Israel’s
unfair treatment of Palestinians and failure to abide by United Nations
resolutions. These are canards. For the motion’s resolutions include circulation
of the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI)
statement, which justifies the boycott not on the grounds of Israeli policies,
but because of its “Zionist ideology.” In short, it isn’t colonialism the
boycottists oppose, but Israel’s very existence.
While the campaign bellwethers are fringe radicals and deluded professional
outliers, they are not harmless, and must be publicly, and repeatedly, denounced
by the mainstream. History teaches that group scapegoating always begins with
control of the knowledge flow, and here is a perfect example of the phenomenon.
The
movement began in Britain in 2002 with a call by two academic ciphers for a
boycott that was quickly scolded into apparent submission. But, as with a
cancer, rapidly proliferating cells soon bloomed at home and metastasized in
other countries, notably France and Australia. Like all cancers, it will not
simply ‘peter out’ without opposition. The boycott campaign must be recognized
and aggressively exposed as the malignant totalitarian impulse it is, a stain on
the principle of free global intellectual exchange underlying all our
institutions of higher learning.
For
this is not just a British university problem, any more than the 1923 assault on
Jewish students and their right to learn at Vienna University was an Austrian
problem. Politically correct academics may think, as one wag put, that one can
“pick up a turd by the clean end” in insisting rabid anti-Zionism isn’t
anti-Semitism, but at this late stage of their obvious convergence in the hard
left, that has become a risibly shopworn shibboleth.
The
British House of Lords has collectively and eloquently denounced the motion (see
the inspiring whole in Hansard for June 12). Baroness Deech noted: “Before any
one reacts with the frequently voiced sentiment that criticism of Israel does
not equate to anti-Semitism, let me hasten to agree, but to point out that the
antagonists of the Jewish students [on university campuses] are failing to make
that distinction.” She warns: “Academic freedom is the first target of
tyrannies, and those who ignore attacks on academic pursuits are co-operating
with tyranny.”
In
the U.S., Columbia University’s president, Lee C. Bollinger, set the gold
standard for moral clarity in a statement last week, declaring the boycott
“utterly antithetical to the fundamental values of the academy,” concluding “if
the British UCU is intent on pursuing its deeply misguided policy, then it
should add Columbia to its boycott list, for we gladly stand together with our
many colleagues in British, American and Israeli universities against such
intellectually shoddy and politically biased attempts to hijack the central
mission of higher education.”
Canada? In response to my query regarding their reaction to the boycott motion,
a University of Toronto spokesperson referred me to a 2002 document in which
general bromides are expressed around the value of academic freedom, along with
a statement that they “do not agree with the boycott action by the British
academics” as it is not “an appropriate vehicle for expressing concern about a
situation.”
The
Swiss-precision tooling of the studied non-partisanship, impersonality and lack
of moral indignation in this lifeless statement suggests boycotts are a matter
of opinion and logic, not morality. It does not name the “British academics” or
identify the “situation” or the victims of the “vehicle.” Further
comment on the boycott campaign’s significant escalation was firmly declined.
McGill University did not respond to my query for its response to the UCU
motion.
In
positive contrast to both, UBC immediately published a forceful message from
president Stephen Toope on its Web site, in which he calls the attempt to stifle
others’ views a “shameful scheme,” and “an affront to modern society, [which]
must be condemned?”
While the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) issued an equally
strongly worded statement, its parallel organization here, The Canadian
Association for University Teachers (CAUT), to which all teaching academics must
belong, and whose mission statement brims with paeans to academic freedom, has
been lamentably silent on the boycott. A spokesman told me that while opposed to
academic boycotts in general, CAUT “does not involve itself in the affairs of
international sister organizations.”
Again by refreshing — and unique — contrast, the Society for Academic Freedom
and Scholarship (SAFS) has been the only Canadian organization to protest the
British campaign unequivocally and frequently from its inception, identifying
the boycott motion as an act of “academic cannibalism.”
For
myself, until I see evidence by my alma maters, the University of Toronto and
McGill University, of the ethical stand modelled by Columbia University, UBC and
SAFS, my annual donation to both will be rerouted to SAFS. As Lord Mitchell
noted in the June 12 Hansard: “Boycotts beget boycotts. Two can play at that
game?” For goodness sake, we all can.
National Post, Wednesday, June 20, 2007.
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