Boycotting Israel

Britain's leading higher education union has voted to boycott two Israeli universities in response to an appeal by 60 Palestinian organizations. The boycott, which would bar Israeli faculty members at Haifa University and Bar-Ilan University from taking part in academic conferences or joint research with British colleagues, has received strong negative responses from Israel, the United States, and Britain, but positive responses from academics who oppose Israel's occupation (The New York Times, May 8, 2005).

Haifa University academic Ilan Pappe is one of the few Israelis supporting the university boycott of Israel. In The Guardian, April 20, 2005, he explains his support of boycotts as peaceful agents of change and specifically addresses the issue of Israel: "Outside pressure is effective in a country where people want to be regarded as part of the civilized world, but their government, with their explicit and implicit help, pursues policies which violate every known human and civil right.... It is up to the civil societies ... to send messages to Israeli academics, businessmen, artists, hi-tech industrialists, and every other section in that society that there is a price tag attached to such policies."

On May 3, 2005, the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) issued a statement that characterizes the British Association of University Teachers (AUT) boycott against Israeli institutions of higher learning as a threat to fundamental principles of academic and intellectual freedom everywhere.