ESSAY
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Excluding Israelis: An Intellectual Anatomy of the Academic Boycott
Graffiti near the University of Southampton, England in July 2006. Photo: Seth Frantzman
ON 31 MAY 2007, THE University and College Union (UCU) - the academics' union in the UK - passed a motion at its annual conference instructing its executive to circulate a call for a boycott of Israeli universities, and to organize a UK-wide tour of branches by Palestinian academics to discuss this. It also declared that in the circumstances of ‘the complicity of Israeli academia in the occupation ... criticism of Israel cannot be construed as antisemitic.' [1]
Four months later, on 28 September, the Union announced that its legal advisers had warned it that such a boycott would be unlawful, because it would constitute discrimination. The opinion came from Lord Lester QC, who had himself played a significant role in creating Britain's anti-discrimination legislation; hence his views about the possibility of the boycott being in breach of that legislation seemed likely to be authoritative. The Union therefore called off the debate, and for the time being, at any rate, the boycott proposal collapsed.
In between these two events, throughout an exceptionally gray, wet British summer, a very intense and acrimonious debate took place in the universities and colleges, and in the national press, and on the internet, in particular on some of the political blogs and also on the Union activists' e-list. The political history of the boycott campaign in the UCU, if it ever gets written, will be extremely interesting, revealing such things as the role played by the Socialist Workers Party, whose members and sympathizers were disproportionately represented both in the ranks of the boycotters and among local union representatives; the extent to which those who supported the boycott proposal were reluctant to allow the union membership to be balloted on this highly divisive topic; and such passing peculiarities as the unexpected intervention of the British Medical Journal. However, I do not propose to write that history here. My aim is rather to present an intellectual anatomy of the debate itself, since the arguments on both sides were so illuminating, and so full of significance for wider debates about Zionism and antisemitism.
Why boycott?
There was one main argument in support of the boycott: the claim that Israel oppresses the Palestinians. There is much Palestinian suffering, and, so this argument goes, Israel is entirely responsible for it. Other arguments favoring a boycott emerged in response to various objections to it, but this appeal to Palestinian suffering and Israeli oppression was the bedrock claim, and boycotters returned to and reiterated it again and again, especially when the weaknesses of their other arguments were demonstrated.
Facing this claim were two central objections to the boycott, deriving from different and independent moral principles (though as we shall see the two arguments rapidly became intertwined); with a third, more consequences-oriented, set of considerations bringing up the rear [2]. The first of these objections was the claim that an academic boycott would violate the principle of academic freedom, a principle which is not only important in its own right, being essential to the flourishing of the academy, but also one which is peculiarly under the protection of academics. If they don't respect academic freedom, so it was often argued, why should anyone else?
"There was one main argument in support of the boycott: the claim that Israel oppresses the Palestinians"
The second main argument against the boycott was that it would be unjust - it would involve discrimination against Israel. Why is Israel being singled out for hostile treatment, it was asked, when there are so many worse malefactors in the world today? Very few people in the universities, even among the most dedicated boycotters, were prepared to say openly that Israel is actually the worst country in the world, and any such claim couldn't of course be supported, in the light of far greater and bloodier oppression elsewhere. So what could justify singling it out for boycotting, when other and much worse states (China, Russia, Sudan, North Korea, Zimbabwe, Syria, Iran, Libya, Burma .....) are left untroubled by any adverse attentions from the UCU? Singling Israel out alone among the nations for punishment can't be justified, so this argument claimed, and hence it is discriminatory; and furthermore, since Israel is the only Jewish state, and is supported by many Jews in other countries, unjustified discrimination against it is effectively antisemitic.
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