tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-81557672471106598362024-03-13T21:58:11.215+00:00BOYCOTTED BRITISH ACADEMICA blog forum of support and solidarity amongst UK academics experiencing the damaging, exclusionary & chilling effects of UCU's boycott Israel campaignBoycotted British Academichttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05336249818541398673noreply@blogger.comBlogger38125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8155767247110659836.post-28012823083767044952016-10-08T17:42:00.001+01:002016-10-09T14:29:20.321+01:00BDS Bullets<br />
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Boycotted British Academichttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05336249818541398673noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8155767247110659836.post-50696484469677430772009-03-22T19:11:00.046+00:002009-11-28T12:33:06.978+00:00BBA's "Tourette's"<div align="justify">OK, I don't really have coprolalia-type Tourette's but sometimes I feel as though I present with similar symptoms, as I endeavour to survive over here by the <a href="http://boycotted-uk-academic.blogspot.com/2008/03/hydra-of-british-academia.html">swamp</a>, a struggle which seems to entail a constant battle to repress a powerful compulsion to make liberal use of the F word - in plentiful permutation. The 'tic' is environmentally-induced and it arises systemically in the circumstances of BBA's existence, for years now harassed, harried even and, why not, also harangued by boycott-agitation and affiliated activity of scapegoating and demonization of the usual, classic subject.<br /><br />It's a predicament in which this blog has oft found me, for instance, <a href="http://boycotted-uk-academic.blogspot.com/2007/10/ucu-activist-list.html">at this point</a>, when I explained how the malaise renders me one pretty damn hopeless player in the game currently prime-entertainment over at the <a href="http://boycotted-uk-academic.blogspot.com/search/label/Bigot%27s%20Playground%20%28UCU%20Activist%20List%29">Bigot's Playground</a>. As I observed back then, it feels as though there's nothing left to be said at such a point and no other language will do.<br /><br />Yet, as we know, BBA represses the compulsion, just as someone with Tourette's can learn to suppress a tic which could be perceived as socially odd or inappropriate or embarrassing - and, often, just too bluntly honest, too raw, too discombobulating, of a kind which leads to discomfort.<br /><br />BBA, long socialized into silence, says nothing - I bite my tongue and closet the rest, safe in secret, only to emerge behind this veil of anonymity, if at all - if, that is, this can be called emerging, constrictive as this veil has become, with this prevailing resounding silence, even on here, with the veil either too tight or forever more threadbare, featherlight as this sheath of ether is becoming...<br /><br />For calling out antisemitism when it is observed in the 'activism' taking place on our campuses, and responding to it in the only way which feels right, is not appropriate over here. It's just not OK in Boycotting Britannia, you see, not the done thing at all.<br /><br />Perhaps in the same way someone with Tourette's learns to 'release' the tic when it feels safe to do so, all this repression in the face of the boycotters seems to have influenced my language, with the word now having somewhat of a tendency to seep out even when I'm communicating with one held most dear - invariably when recounting some obnoxious happening or other over here on this little, if sadly significant, swathe of the swamp.<br /><br />BBA has come in for reprimand on this account - quite reasonably, I might add...<br /><br />With this in mind, I was to be found the other day watching <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0486585/">this</a> documentary, perhaps in the vain hope of finding a way to answer to this language-detraction, something along the lines that I'm bound to speak in this way as a result of the strictures and pressures of my current employ, the repressions it involves, and the generally sorry state in which I find myself, here, as BBA. No such thing was found (even if a diverting moment was had) but the film did contain an interesting segment in which various politicians were exposed to have made use of the word off-record. I was struck by an apparent correlation between Jews as the subject-matter here and the unguarded use of the F word in the examples which happened best to demonstrate the point being made about how even <em>they</em> do it - Clinton, Nixon, Baker etc. (see <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UmmhRXwaNo4">here</a> from 2:08 for about 40secs, excerpting some of the segments which caused BBA to make this observation at the time).<br /><br />Hey, what the F is that about?!</div>Boycotted British Academichttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05336249818541398673noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8155767247110659836.post-66489667759184178472009-02-22T20:04:00.050+00:002009-03-22T14:43:22.638+00:00Backfiring Boycott - Deadline for Submissions!!<div align="justify">As this blog has previously <a href="http://boycotted-uk-academic.blogspot.com/2008/03/story-of-backfiring-boycott.html">noted</a>, the boycott has actually rather perversely caused or at least encouraged the absolute opposite of what was intended, namely a strengthening of ties between British and Israeli universities.<br /><br />And the story goes on, the pattern continues... BBA's inbox is periodically augmented by messages 'helpfully' reminding me that I'm meant to be submitting research proposals (lest I'd forget?), a list which often festers until I have time - indeed even energy or the very will, given conditions by the <a href="http://boycotted-uk-academic.blogspot.com/2008/03/hydra-of-british-academia.html">swamp</a> - to trawl through links to the various funding schemes presently inviting applications from academics. The last instalment includes a link to the <strong>Britain-Israel Research and Academic Exchange Partnership</strong>, a funding scheme to support collaborative work between Israeli and British academics which the boycott movement's nefarious activities quite directly, rather marvelously, brought about.<br /><br />Unfortunately, time is short, in case any eligible readers of this blog might be interested in applying - the deadline is: <strong>2nd March 22:00 GMT</strong>. The details are <a href="http://www.britishcouncil.org/israel-birax-call-for-proposals-2.htm">here</a>.<br /><br />Just think, in addition to the chance of doing research with leading academics based in Israel,<strong>**</strong> such an application could well have the added bonus of driving the boycotters just that little bit more bonkers!<br />_______________________<br /><br /><strong>**</strong> and, of course, the boycott - and, more particularly, much of the anti-boycott riposte it has so vexatiously necessitated (<a href="http://boycotted-uk-academic.blogspot.com/2008/09/noodles.html">e.g.</a>) - merely serves to remind us just how many Israeli academics meet this highest of standards (as we, meanwhile, seem to have distinguished ourselves, above all, for our barmy boycott brigade and the devastatingly depressing way in which we, British academics, have allowed them to cause such a load of old bonkers in Dear Old Blighty!)</div>Boycotted British Academichttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05336249818541398673noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8155767247110659836.post-53696588259925462062008-09-22T14:58:00.023+01:002008-11-01T15:42:38.687+00:00"Envy and Resentment"<div align="justify">Belatedly, I put my hand on a rather mangled hard-copy of the week-end before last's <em>Jerusalem Post</em> and saw <a href="http://www.pressdisplay.com/pressdisplay/viewer.aspx?issue=10072008091200000000001001&page=4&article=0d2d3fbe-2371-42ba-8784-57e8a47d955d&key=3enIHJk7sYcZWbYdrMrCQQ==&feed=rss">this</a>, which I can't seem to find in the on-line edition. In case you have trouble seeing the paper through the reader provided, it's a very short news-in-brief item, the gist of which is that a periodical of Tel Aviv University's law dept (<em><a href="http://www.bepress.com/til/">Theoretical Inquiries in Law</a></em>) has been ranked top of all law periodicals published outside the US in a recent review. Under the perverse aura cast in this era of boycotts, it's satisfying to note that the review process considered over 200 periodicals published outside the US, including a good number submitted from Boycotting Britannia, and that this relatively young Israeli journal should lead the pack.<br /><br />Boycott that, you noodles!<br /><br />I held off publishing partly because I couldn't come up with a title I liked, opting to leave it as the last word of the then post - "noodles" - which seemed somehow too kind. I'd wanted to develop the post along the lines of how this story of the TAU journal outshining all, including the Boycotting Brits, brought to mind an aspect of what I can't help thinking must motivate the <a href="http://boycotted-uk-academic.blogspot.com/2008/03/bds.html">BDS</a> bonkers brigade. But then I got too depressed by the task of articulating it and, as usual, gave up on the post, distracted by the horrors perpetually peppering my present - more like plaguing if not persecuting it, but don't get me started...<br /><br />Anyway, the title came to me just now, as I was reading <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/21/books/review/Hitchens-t.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=hitchens%20bernard-henri%20levy&st=cse&oref=slogin">The Dude on BHL</a>. At least that, for the task of articulation remains apparently too depressing for BBA in these "<a href="http://www.amazon.com/Left-Dark-Times-Against-Barbarism/dp/140006435X">dark times</a>" and besides, in essence, isn't it just really obvious -- that age-old characteristic of that age-old hatred -- so let the title suffice, since BBA's capacities are currently being diverted (indeed, spent) in the struggle simply to survive the <a href="http://boycotted-uk-academic.blogspot.com/2008/03/hydra-of-british-academia.html">swamp</a>, such that BHL via The Dude or whatever will have to do in the circumstances...</div>Boycotted British Academichttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05336249818541398673noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8155767247110659836.post-44840523810550104512008-08-26T15:19:00.049+01:002009-03-10T17:07:31.319+00:00Harry's Place and the Bullies of UCU<div align="justify">I once drew comfort from the assumption, erroneous as I now discover, that UCU's near-Stalinist modus operandi could safely be regarded as confined solely to the contained sphere of operation of UCU itself. Dangerous and damaging as that has proven to be for many union members, BBA's experience being by no means unique in this regard, I felt somehow relieved by the thought that such mechanisms of intimidation & silencing would have no traction outside the <a href="http://boycotted-uk-academic.blogspot.com/2008/06/parade-as-charade.html">fascist</a> organization which UCU risks becoming, oh so insistently, compulsively even (to the point that my caveat of a conditional there - through the notion of risk - ought not really to be there but, hey, only BBA here, still, whatever remains there, and I'll do caveats, the lot, naturally falling back into the patterns of denial which gets one dwelling by the <a href="http://boycotted-uk-academic.blogspot.com/2008/03/hydra-of-british-academia.html">swamp</a>, and then to continue, often flailing helplessly as now...).<br /><br />Well, how wrong I have turned out to be. For it would appear that people at UCU are not content merely to muzzle the majority of the most effective and trenchant of the anti-boycotters who, as members of this union, have been forced to expend vast quantities of time and energy responding to the <a href="http://boycotted-uk-academic.blogspot.com/2008/03/hydra-of-british-academia.html?showComment=1207034820000#c1833367321447981762">vile bile</a> which passes for solidarity within our union, silenced (<a href="http://www.engageonline.org.uk/blog/article.php?id=2066">e.g.</a>) for nothing other than their valiant efforts to stem the virulent antisemitism which has been allowed to become rife in UCU. No, now it would appear that UCU or, at the very least, people closely connected with it and its racist boycott campaign, have set the net far wider still and are presently engaging in their usual threats and tactics of intimidation, only this time it's out there in public, in full view, for all to see, and not merely behind closed academic doors, as has happened to date, in the deepest and most frightening secrecy imaginable, courtesy of UCU HQ, apparently adamant to protect none but the racists.<br /><br />Today, it's not just us handful of beleaguered academics who emerge black & blue from the experience. No, now it's this whole wide world of a web of ours which is rendered vulnerable to the bullying ways of the boycotters. Today, <em>Harry's Place</em> has been taken down for nothing at all, nothing but the shedding of some light on the goings on within UCU and the racist filth which passes for solidarity on the activists list (aka the <a href="http://boycotted-uk-academic.blogspot.com/search/label/Bigot%27s%20Playground%20%28UCU%20Activist%20List%29">Bigot's Playground</a>).<br /><br />More details to follow, when I know them, and no doubt on <em>Harry's Place</em>, as soon as it is up and running again, which I hope will be imminently; the less time the better, for this is a most dangerous precedent indeed. For now, here's what I could find: <a href="http://modernityblog.wordpress.com/2008/08/26/news-on-harrys-place-26-august-2008/">Modernity</a>, with some background (and an <a href="http://modernityblog.wordpress.com/2008/08/26/duke-cushman-and-delich-silly-and-counter-productive/">update</a>), which put me onto this <a href="http://jennadelich.blogspot.com/">link</a>, amusingly named after the bully in question, and presently functioning as an ersatz <em>Harry's Place</em> while the real site is temporarily down.<br /><br />I feel bound to break this silence into which I am ever having to retreat, such is the nature of my existence over here by the swamp, this mire of myriad monstrousness - the whole saga involving <em>Harry's Place </em>and the UCU bullies being but the latest example of what, in essence, happens constantly over at the Bigot's Playground. And it's a rather salutary example at that, in so far as it makes transparent what is usually more carefully & heavily obfuscated in - although invariably characteristic to - the style of argument (if it can be called argument) of a boycotter. And no doubt in this salutary property lies the real cause for <em>Harry's Place</em> having to fend off the bullies at present. I feel compelled to speak out today, even if these days I mostly find myself speechless again, <a href="http://boycotted-uk-academic.blogspot.com/2008/05/beyond-words-post-hydra.html">beyond words</a>, for I want to register my alarm at this very troubling development, which risks doing to the blogosphere what has been done to my union, which now functions solely as a reliable source for a most abominable hate-fest, thanks to union debates being conducted on terms which ensure that the only speech which ever gets protected is that of the racists.<br /><br /><strong>Update - late the following day...<br /><a href="http://www.hurryupharry.org/2008/08/27/going-nowhere/">Phew!</strong></a></div>Boycotted British Academichttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05336249818541398673noreply@blogger.com9tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8155767247110659836.post-70609310335248773932008-06-17T17:36:00.042+01:002009-02-16T23:56:22.222+00:00Parade as Charade<div align="justify">When it comes to marching, you can count on <a href="http://www.ucu.org.uk/index.cfm?articleid=3328">UCU</a>. Joining up with a parade? You can be sure UCU will be there, making a big show of its much vaunted anti-fascist and anti-racist credentials, credulity-stretching as they are in view of this experience with the boycott.<br /><br />For when it comes to translating all this parading into practical action, when it comes to fulfilling its executive functions according to pledges made and declarations proclaimed at marches such as these, where's UCU? Which side is it on, when we look beyond all this, to the concrete and the detail of its work and activities?<br /><br />If we take how UCU is handling the boycott issue as our barometer -- and, after all, UCU has distinguished itself for little else, tragically, since its inception, this being the core issue which has dominated, indeed paralyzed, its activism to date -- what we find is that it all turns out to be a bit of a charade really, for when UCU marches, it is effectively in fact marching against itself. Different name, for sure, but don't be confused about the underlying politics because even if the boycotters are too sloppy to see it, and even more so if they do see it, make no mistake: this isn't different in any relevant regard when it comes to fighting fascism, with many now noting the "fusion between far-left and far-right forces" these days (<a href="http://www.thejc.com/home.aspx?ParentId=m12s32s35&SecId=35&AId=59889&ATypeId=1">e.g.</a>).<br /><br />Yet while it marches against one of these forces, UCU is, on the basis of how it is acting in relation to the boycott issue, all the while busy performing and instantiating that fusion, and in the process thereby becoming very close essentially to the thing against which it marches.<br /><br />Parading? Marching? Sure! But respecting the laws which have been put in place to guard against fascism & racism? Nah, silly, that's just ziocons desperately deploying the tools of empire to stifle criticism and debate (by which they apparently mean the sort of hate-fest & demonization on display in the comments which this blog's whistleblowers have appended to the earlier <a href="http://boycotted-uk-academic.blogspot.com/2008/03/hydra-of-british-academia.html">hydra</a> post) and to hinder acts of solidarity (translation: the sort of pathetic gestures the <a href="http://boycotted-uk-academic.blogspot.com/2008/03/bds.html">BDS</a> movement stages, which function and operate, in classic scapegoat style, so as to distract attention away from the problems which more immediately implicate the civic responsibilities of these gesturers (a phenomenon previously captured <a href="http://boycotted-uk-academic.blogspot.com/2007/12/bankruptsy-of-solidarity.html">here</a>, which uses the example of art to represent a phenomenon which I've discovered the boycotters to display in phenomenal quantities)).<br /><br />No amount of marching can mask, nor will parade upon parade paper over the uncomfortable truth about what UCU represents today: far from helping in the fight against fascism, UCU must now be considered a significant target in that fight, given this policy it insists on endorsing, year after injurious year, in breach of the very laws which have been put in place to rid us of this scourge.</div>Boycotted British Academichttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05336249818541398673noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8155767247110659836.post-32615920825777861282008-05-29T10:30:00.011+01:002008-05-30T10:30:52.604+01:00Madness and UCU<div align="justify">In my <a href="http://boycotted-uk-academic.blogspot.com/2008/05/declare-yourself-israeli-academic.html">last post</a> I alluded to the madness with which I am having to contend, working here as BBA.<br /><br />No sooner published, what did I encounter? Yet more madness: UCU <a href="http://www.ucu.org.uk/index.cfm?articleid=3320">claiming</a> that a boycott is not a boycott. No, it's solidarity. No, really.<br /><br />Not only am I stuck in a time warp, it seems the moment has been frozen in the absurd, where even academics can't make the most essential and, you'd have thought, basic of distinctions between demonization and scapegoating, on the one hand; and legitimate criticism, on the other. And not only that, in doing so, they then even want to make us think that a <a href="http://blog.z-word.com/2008/05/the-ucus-boycott-of-israel-and-how-to-fight-it/#more-110">boycott is not a boycott</a>. And that the sort of hate-fest on display in the <a href="http://boycotted-uk-academic.blogspot.com/2008/03/hydra-of-british-academia.html">hydra</a> comments is debate. The swamp is overtaken with absurdity, on top of every thing else.<br /><br />Someone, please, tell me this is not the profession I've chosen...</div>Boycotted British Academichttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05336249818541398673noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8155767247110659836.post-32177260183675172942008-05-29T07:39:00.016+01:002013-12-01T23:27:18.948+00:00Declare Yourself an Israeli Academic!<div align="justify">
Please sign the <a href="http://www.spme.net/cgi-bin/display_petitions.cgi?ID=9&Action=Sign">petition</a> proposed by SPME:<br />
<br />
<span style="color: #a64d79;">"We are academics, scholars, researchers and professionals of differing religious and political perspectives. We all agree that singling out Israelis for an academic boycott is wrong. To show our solidarity with our Israeli academics in this matter, we, the undersigned, hereby declare ourselves to be Israeli academics for purposes of any academic boycott. We will regard ourselves as Israeli academics and decline to participate in any activity from which Israeli academics are excluded."</span><br />
<br />
This is the continuation of the action SPME initiated last year, which has to do date garnered over eleven thousand signatures from around the world. The petition has now been reactivated for it would seem that we presently exist in a time warp around here where, each year, we're required to perform the very same actions all over again, such behaviour being necessitated by my 'colleagues' not giving a damn about waging an insufferable racist campaign year upon year, regardless of the damage it does, in fact, wearing their being the cause of it as a badge of honour. The good news, at least in terms of staving off the feeling of being stuck in time, is that, if you've already signed, there's no need to do so again. At least one step which doesn't have to be senselessly repeated as we fight this beast which refuses to go away...<br />
<br />
~~~~~~~<br />
<br />
The story of this blog, the story of BBA, a beginning:<br />
<br />
BBA started in life signing this petition, when it was originally proposed, roughly this time last year. It was in the act of doing so that I first applied the label 'boycotted' to myself, a label which has since come to have so much resonance in capturing my condition, as I try to sustain a job as an academic here in Boycotting Britannia. <br />
<br />
Initially, I signed in something of a state of stupor, desperate to do something about what had come to pass. As you'll see from the links to the right, I regard signing such petitions as therapy - it was a relief to be able to do something, to lessen the feeling of powerlessness in the face of this tide of hatred whose existence I'd finally been forced to stop denying.<br />
<br />
You know the scene: a few clicks, without much thought or planning, as one does, in that weird way of the world wide web. It was only afterwards, as I contemplated what I'd just done, that I realized how apt this act had been in terms of representing the state in which I found myself and, thus, BBA virtually entered the world.<br />
<br />
I started thinking about what this would mean, to be boycotted in this way, according to how I'd just pledged in the petition: I asked myself which parts of me would be boycotted, how much of me - BBA going through the motions of being an academic here in the UK - how much of that would remain and how much of it would fall under the formulation "for the purposes of any academic boycott". Gradually, I grew to realize that this splitting just won't do - it's part of the denial I no longer seem to be able to engender; and it yields the sort of madness with which I am presently having to contend, just for doing this job, at this time...(to be continued)</div>
Boycotted British Academichttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05336249818541398673noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8155767247110659836.post-58961961449795451202008-05-28T21:00:00.007+01:002008-05-30T10:40:00.704+01:00Another UCU Congress... Another Racist Motion<a href="http://www.stoptheboycott.org/news/news/ucu-passes-motion-to-reintroduce-israel-academic-boycott">This</a> just in, about what emerged this time out of the swamp of swamps:<br /><br /><span style="color:#ff6666;">The University and College Union (UCU) has today passed a motion that would allow for the reintroduction of a boycott of Israeli academia.</span><br /><span style="color:#ff6666;"></span><br /><span style="color:#ff6666;">At its annual congress in Manchester, the motion was passed without debate and by a show of hands.</span><br /><br />I despair...<br /><br />I've not forgotten my <a href="http://boycotted-uk-academic.blogspot.com/2008/05/beyond-words-post-hydra.html">pledge</a> of the other day but today is not a day for writing. Just despair...Boycotted British Academichttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05336249818541398673noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8155767247110659836.post-38220895919727108022008-05-26T23:40:00.059+01:002008-08-29T10:46:51.496+01:00Beyond Words: Post Hydra<div align="justify">BBA has been having a hard time surviving by the swamp since the last post, way back, the upshot of which has been this silence which has prevailed in the ensuing - another spell for which I find myself apologizing to you, yet again... Thanks for your perseverance and understanding in keeping up with BBA through this ordeal, for staying with me in spite of my silence and even growing in number. That must defy some kind of blogging law, surely. Anyway, thank you...<br /><br />Apparently, such spells have become a regular feature of my job these days - you'd have thought I would have become accustomed by now to the scene around here, to the point that I wouldn't descend into this state time and again. Yet descend I do, each time this beast resurfaces, for I am left incredulous by what I see, unable to make sense of the manifest travesty which is being made of our anti-racism commitments, as I observe those I might once most have expected to understand what's required to promote equality, in fact, massively falling foul of our anti-racism laws, and willingly, knowingly & obviously so - indeed, in some cases, wearing this breach as some kind of preposterous and deeply nauseating badge of honour!<br /><br />From today's warped perspective, it's an honour not merely incontestably to reveal, beyond all doubt, how much dereliction of duty there is about here amongst critical actors in the fight against racism - our unions and our academics who ought to be showing the way in how the duty to promote equality is to be discharged. It's an honour flagrantly to flout laws aimed at achieving greater social equality and eliminating discrimination in society. It's an honour to expend precious resources and divert the whole academic corpus, away from the pressing core issues we face today, towards instigating, year upon year, the absolute antithesis of that to which this duty is meant to conduce.<br /><br />I hope it's obvious wherein lies the cause for this silence even if it's presently apparently still too challenging & debilitating for more direct expression, such that, instead, in the interim, this blog has had to speak louder through silence, beyond words...<br /><br />Just like Hercules, it took some friends to get there in the end, bringing fire to the labour. Here, virtually and anonymously, for this blog has attracted others to come on here to proffer an explanation or at least a clue for this silence, by giving testament when I have been left speechless all this time, flailing about close to the edge, having ventured too near the swamp and the horrors it conceals, then finding myself shocked & terrorized into silence by what I have seen, and by the <a href="http://normblog.typepad.com/normblog/2008/03/portrait-of-the.html">stalker</a>-<a href="http://boycotted-uk-academic.blogspot.com/2007/10/ucu-activist-list.html">bullying</a> ways of this lot, lost in so many senses, not least, lost for a way to describe what the scene over here has been looking like since I was last in touch.<br /><br />~~~~~~~<br /><br />This clue can be found in some comments which have been left to my <a href="http://boycotted-uk-academic.blogspot.com/2008/03/hydra-of-british-academia.html">last</a> post by this blog's erstwhile whistleblowers who heroically come on here to perform the necessary task of shedding some light on what has been going on behind closed academic doors around here, when I've manifestly been in no position to do so. If this blog does nothing else, at least that. Thank you!<br /><br />A word of explanation about the comments: they are extracts from the discussion list hosted by UCU supposedly for its activists to further core union aims & objectives. As you'll see, in fact, what the list confirms and enacts is the exact opposite: a breach of the same. Readers may remember this list under the label it goes by on this blog and elsewhere: the <a href="http://boycotted-uk-academic.blogspot.com/search/label/Bigot%27s%20Playground%20%28UCU%20Activist%20List%29">Bigot's Playground</a>. I recognize the text reproduced in these comments as I have had the great misfortune of having had to read these messages, and many others like them, in more or less real time, as they were sent, for I am registered as a subscriber to this list and now no longer have the luxury but to torture myself with it regularly, given developments (masochistically, I fear, for this act continues to be put to little tangible effect to date, as you may well imagine given my silence even on here - well, no effect beyond inducing and worsening this state of terror all this seems to put me in!).<br /><br />For those with the incredible luck not to be in this 'privileged' position, I thought an explanation might be needed to clarify what is catalogued in these comments: the poster or posters who sent these messages (as 'anonymous') must either be UCU members themselves or people to whom list messages have been leaked (for, yes, even though it's a list whose secrecy is being policed to near-Stalinist extremes (about which, more in a forthcoming post), its contents are apparently all the while being liberally leaked, to the point of making this secrecy a frightening sham whose only objective can be to protect the racists!). The name which appears at the bottom of most of the comments on the hydra thread is the name of the UCU member who originally sent out the message in question to some 700-odd sorry subscribers to that list. Frighteningly, many of the original authors of these messages work as academics here in Boycotting Britannia, would you believe, a few even in top posts at well-regarded universities...<br /><br />~~~~~~~<br /><br />In case the language I have been using of late to describe this beast of a boycott strikes some as objectionable, just check out those comments. This is nothing if not terrifying and monstrous, and the comments give the measure of how toxic and poisonous a working environment I am having to face here as BBA in result. Given the nature of the 'argument' on display in these comments, it seems fitting that all this has been, as it were, dumped following the hydra post where I first called upon the myth to capture the scenario unfolding over here.<br /><br />Since my last blog post, I've been trying to find what it takes to earn some distance from what I observe, sufficiently to react in time to set the context. It would probably have been clearer had our whistleblowers had a more up-to-date post on which to dump this stuff, giving an account of what's been going on in and around the bigot's playground of late, but that post's even more overdue than this one and is, I promise, imminently forthcoming. It's even worse, if you can believe, than that which can be seen through the window on all of this which the hydra comments furnish. Truly frightening happenings around here, over by the swamp...<br /><br />It was Zkharya who first got me worrying about applying the myth to this context, in a comment over at <a href="http://www.engageonline.org.uk/blog/comment.php?id=1778">Engage</a> (a much belated thanks, as ever, for the great honour of the link...). Thinking through one of Zkharya's objections lead me to the realization that I was drawn to use the language of this myth not particularly because of our monster itself, although clearly the obvious parallels in its properties and nature first got me thinking along these lines: the fact that the monster keeps reappearing when it ought to have been put to rest long ago, many, MANY times over; its poisonous & nefarious effects on our campuses, our 'civil' society debates and our principles of equality and non-discrimination - all of which should have functioned by now to rid us of this particular beast when, in truth, the very opposite has transpired, allowing it to grow into such a monster as to defy all that which should so obviously have defeated it; and leaving BBA thereby more terrorized in the experience...<br /><br />But what gave the myth its salience at the time lies more in the character of Hercules, the labour and not particularly the monster, as a way of representing my feelings about the nature of the role I seem to have landed myself in, merely by dint of having chosen to work in this profession, innocent (or, more accurately, in denial) of the fact that this would entail working in an environment where such beasts would be allowed to keep spewing out this sort of venom, for this long, with this frequency, this ferocity. It was the Herculean task I felt to be required of me in such circumstances which made it have resonance. So Herculean, in fact, that in the ensuing I felt defeatist again, without what it takes to survive in such an environment; and thus, silence once again took over.<br /><br />My point was not particularly that the boycotters are beastly, although they clearly are, as the extracts which have been attached to the hydra post patently attest. The point, rather, was more to highlight the fight which is required of me, one I would need to feel like Hercules to fight. And since I am not Hercules, what did I do? Yes, BBA, through and through...<br /><br />I'll even confess, just so that you get a fuller picture, pathetic as it is, that I had qualms about the naming & shaming I was acquiescing in by leaving the comments unmoderated and I even investigated how I might edit some of these hydra messages (there's no way which I discovered...). As you know, even if I try to conjure up an image of a monster in growing into this role I never conceived of having to take on, I have, in fact, been annoyingly decent & civil to these boycotter types: I've not named them or even reproduced their toxic filth on here but resorted, in my meekness, merely to reproducing the objection of anti-boycotters to the same. Oh so Herculean! So if I was bigging anyone up, I was in fact desperately trying to big myself up! And I apparently failed abysmally as things seem to have panned out...<br /><br />~~~~~~~<br /><br />Another poster on that Engage thread, YbA, suggests that perhaps a later labour in the myth would be suitable to describe the scene around here:<br /><br /><span style="color:#ff6666;">the Augean Stables (Herakles' 5th Labour) - the anti-boycotters need to divert the rivers of anti-racism and commonsense to wash away the filth<br /></span><br />Which made me think of <a href="http://www.theaugeanstables.com/">this</a> site, of course, whose title is inspired by the 5th Labour but whose banner is illustrated with a picture of our labour of the swamps (I guess not too many paintings can exist of the 5th Labour for obvious reasons!).<br /><br />YbA does well to bring up the image of large amounts of dung in describing the problem on our campuses these days - I used scatological references myself at the time the <a href="http://boycotted-uk-academic.blogspot.com/2007/11/in-whirl-of-walt-mearsh-show-some.html">Walt & Mearsh show</a> was playing on my campus, largely to let off steam during a rather nauseating moment which came to pass over here by the swamp. And it's dung - truck loads of it - which is poisoning debates amongst activists in my union and bringing my profession into disrepute.<br /><br />What, <em>this</em> is solidarity?!<br /><br />~~~~~~~<br /><br />I think perhaps I might just possibly have worked myself to a position of greater robustness at present so, tentatively, I hereby pledge to blog more regularly. Thanks for all the links and the appreciation you've shown this blog. I will try to make your clicks more worthwhile from henceforth...<br /><br />Let's just hope this spirit & pledge survive our imminent <a href="http://www.ucu.org.uk/index.cfm?articleid=3288">UCU Congress</a> and that this swamp of swamps doesn't cause me to retreat into silence anew... </div>Boycotted British Academichttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05336249818541398673noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8155767247110659836.post-81637110897687143222008-03-29T23:45:00.033+00:002008-04-01T01:16:54.458+01:00The Hydra of British Academia<div align="justify"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjQBC2tHyfP2NDyPTBNTuRKgv0TGmQwe-REZqEB3BuV03QvPprpJE3yK9I75ajRakf4Xn1q452wfnukWjRjbmPR7LrpQsigJNpHMosOJmRB44hbz4ldqe3-zr9BFTa2aESTA1n_qI-_wPk/s1600-h/hydra.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5183299120160461810" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; WIDTH: 151px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 224px" height="222" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjQBC2tHyfP2NDyPTBNTuRKgv0TGmQwe-REZqEB3BuV03QvPprpJE3yK9I75ajRakf4Xn1q452wfnukWjRjbmPR7LrpQsigJNpHMosOJmRB44hbz4ldqe3-zr9BFTa2aESTA1n_qI-_wPk/s200/hydra.jpg" width="157" border="0" /></a>Here in Boycotting Britannia, a monster lurks in the <a href="http://boycotted-uk-academic.blogspot.com/2007/11/include-me-out.html">swamps</a>, a monster which rises again and again to terrorize some of us who have to walk nearby. It terrorizes us with its most poisonous breath and the polluted air it leaves behind. And it reappears anew each time we thought it had gone away, apparently invincible, blusterously, as if unchallenged by the mechanisms which are meant to protect us from such beasts. Each time it looks to have been vanquished by these important weapons which we have long struggled to design and perfect, the monster returns somehow miraculously rejuvenated, reborn, and nothing seems to shield us effectively from its venom and belligerence; apparently - at least by the appearances <a href="http://www.engageonline.org.uk/blog/article.php?id=1774">UCU</a> is keeping - not the protections aimed at safeguarding us from monsters such as this: our anti-racism laws and our guarantees of equality of treatment. Year after year - with each UCU Congress, swamp of swamps - the monster is resuscitated & emboldened. And with each year, it gets uglier, more beastly, more destructive, leaving greater damage in its wake. Legend has it that the hydra of the Lernaean swamps grew two heads (in some versions, three) in place of each one decapitated by Hercules. The more he fought the monster, the more ferocious and bold it became. As Ovid puts it, in <em>Metamorphoses</em>:<br /><br /><span style="color:#ff6666;">It throve on wounds: of all its hundred heads I cut off one but from its neck two more sprang to succeed it, stronger than before! <span style="font-size:78%;">[</span><a href="http://www.theoi.com/Ther/DrakonHydra.html"><span style="font-size:78%;">9. 69 ff (trans. Melville)</span></a><span style="font-size:78%;">]</span></span><br /><br />And so it seems with this beast of an academic boycott: the more we fight it, the more it is cut down, the stronger it seems to re-emerge, year upon year, undaunted by the clear disapprobation of those the union is meant to represent, the overwhelmingly anti-boycott majority in the rank & file (as gleaned in a variety of reliable branch & other polls - short, of course, of the show-stopping <a href="http://ucu-ballot.org/">ballot of UCU members</a> which the boycotters so fear and <a href="http://www.ucu-ballot.org/2007/09/actively_preventing_the_direct_1.html">contrive</a> to <a href="http://www.socialistworker.co.uk/art.php?id=13103">avoid</a>); emboldened, apparently, by a whole compendium of legal opinion, obtained through wasteful expenditure of union resources which are meant to be so scarce, each one attesting to the racist & illegal nature of this campaign, culminating, let us not forget, in the opinion of counsel authored in 2007 by none other than the <a href="http://www.engageonline.org.uk/blog/article.php?id=1476">godfather</a> of our anti-discrimination and human rights laws. If none of this could stop this beast's destructive sweep, what will it take?<br /><br />Not even half a year after it seemed to have been conclusively & categorically found to be in breach of those laws, marking yet another of those shameful moments when British unions seemed to want to be the instigators of racism, at the very earliest opportunity, <a href="http://education.guardian.co.uk/higher/news/story/0,,2268512,00.html">the beast returns</a> and UCU is yet again <a href="http://www.engageonline.org.uk/blog/article.php?id=1767">pushing</a> a <a href="http://hurryupharry.bloghouse.net/archives/2008/03/27/should_members_of_totalitarian_political_parties_be_banned_from_teaching_in_universities.php">racist and illegal proposal</a>. (For previous sightings of this monster and the story of the battle against it, see <a href="http://www.engageonline.org.uk/blog/article.php?id=1764">here</a>.)<br /><br />Remember, the hydra killed with its poisonous breath, just as this boycott beast harms with its venomous hot air, constantly blowing in places like the <a href="http://boycotted-uk-academic.blogspot.com/search/label/Bigot%27s%20Playground%20%28UCU%20Activist%20List%29">Bigot's Playground</a> (UCU Activist List) all this time, regardless of the official position; and now, yet again, officially, by the terms of this latest proposed UCU motion, which wants to mandate yet more of this toxic, hateful posturing up & down our campuses, as if they are not already bad enough.<br /><br />If we look to the Hydra myth for how this will turn out, it's not looking too good. The only way Hercules came out victorious was to burn the monster's severed stumps, thereby cauterizing the wounds and preventing regeneration of any more of those deadly heads. Why does UCU insist on playing so perilously close to the fire?<br /><br />If only this were just the stuff of myths...</div><div align="justify"><a href="http://artfiles.art.com/images/-/Narcisse-Berchere/Hercules-and-the-Lernaean-Hydra-after-Gustave-Moreau-circa-1876-Giclee-Print-C11723856.jpeg"><span style="font-size:78%;">photo credit</span></a><span style="font-size:78%;"> (Narcisse Berchere after Gustave Moreau)</span> </div>Boycotted British Academichttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05336249818541398673noreply@blogger.com89tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8155767247110659836.post-52046230047245555102008-03-18T18:58:00.013+00:002008-05-30T10:36:24.324+01:00Mourning a Friend: Anthony Minghella<div align="justify"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjoHnzIkC3fSFtOeRy0r994pdMku93IktQaPg_iQNzd3AVhymvyNnHEzNYWrBQvn2UeWT1LdTCxBr-p0nw80dilBqzhr-NOcnKKtHeRbib-tsGzPPQxN0d3-TfoID2hVXRqtVcEjzpqH8A/s1600-h/minghella.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5179128505550880962" style="CURSOR: hand" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjoHnzIkC3fSFtOeRy0r994pdMku93IktQaPg_iQNzd3AVhymvyNnHEzNYWrBQvn2UeWT1LdTCxBr-p0nw80dilBqzhr-NOcnKKtHeRbib-tsGzPPQxN0d3-TfoID2hVXRqtVcEjzpqH8A/s400/minghella.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><br />I only knew him through his movies and writing, through his lectures and public pronouncements, yet I find myself disconsolate on hearing this terrible news. I am, of course, a big fan of his fine body of work, his movies having given me such pleasure, evoked much emotion and taught me lots over the years - years which seem long in having being lived so well & fully, yet too few in number... But when I mourn today, I don't just feel the absence of a brilliant writer & director, a generous teacher, who had so much more to give & produce. I grieve the loss of this man, whose <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mensch">menschlichkeit</a> has won me over to the point that I should experience his passing as if he'd been known to me beyond all this, even accounting for that strong hook of affinity between second-generation immigrant Londoners, a perspective I felt I could recognize in his work and in his being. More than anything, he showed us so fully and in such exemplary fashion what it means to be a decent, good & honourable human being who maintains high standards in everything, in art as in friendship.<br /><br />His fair-mindedness, good character & fine sensibilities come through in so many ways which those who actually knew him are talking about today all over the place. Let me just put the spotlight on one aspect of the friendship he offered: his championing of Israeli cinema. In doing so, he took a brave political stance in opposition to the boycotter-types with whom we have become so familiar and he showed much solidarity and friendship in these times when both feel in such short supply. When he headed up the British Film Institute, for instance, London hosted a <a href="http://london.mfa.gov.il/mfm/Data/71410.doc">special season</a> devoted to showcasing Israeli movies.<strong><span style="color:#ff0000;"> </span></strong>The year before, he'd visited the prestigious <a href="http://www.jff.org.il/?cl=en">Jerusalem Film Festival</a> as guest of honour. The festival's director, <a href="http://www.romanianjewish.org/en/index_isro_arhiva_30.html">Lia van Leer</a>, recalls that he<br /><br /><span style="color:#ff6666;">was so taken with Israel last year that he went back to the UK to open a Jewish film festival there with the declaration "I'm a Zionist." And then, van Leer adds with relish, he went on to London's (ultra-liberal-artsie) National Film Theater, where he was greeted accusingly with jeers of "You're a f***ing Zionist!"</span> [<a href="http://pqasb.pqarchiver.com/jpost/access/859778051.html?dids=859778051:859778051&FMT=ABS&FMTS=ABS:FT&date=Jun+24%2C+2005&author=David+Horovitz&pub=Jerusalem+Post&edition=&startpage=24&desc=Senseless+death%2C+absent+comedy">source</a>]<br /><br /><span style="color:#ff6666;">Having spent an enlightening time in Israel at the Jerusalem Film Festival, Minghella told us with a laugh: ‘By adoption I guess I am Jewish now. I’d like to be.’</span> [<a href="http://www.timeout.com/film/news/153/short-cuts.html">source</a>]<br /><br />A <a href="http://www.bafta.org/library/webcasts/a-life-in-pictures-anthony-minghella,291,BA.html">life in pictures</a> (podcast of what was probably his last lecture). </div>Boycotted British Academichttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05336249818541398673noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8155767247110659836.post-6515703960925318172008-03-08T01:25:00.032+00:002008-05-30T10:35:13.997+01:00The Story of the Backfiring Boycott<div align="justify">This blog is meant to give an account of the damaging results & effects of this bonkers boycott, as they have been written onto BBA's life - thus far, an account which can only really be read or perceived between the lines, I'm afraid, since I still don't seem to have found a way of giving expression to all this ...yet! Mostly, I tend to give up on the draft posts, ever burgeoning in number, as it all feels too challenging and depressing to voice; or the process of articulating it, too counterproductive, destructive even, in terms of my ability to proceed in this course I seem to be on, here in Boycotting Britannia - here, as BBA - a course which appears to require, I now realize, more denial than I seem capable of engendering anymore.<br /><br />Today's post, however, is one of those which is easier to write, since it concerns a positive unintended consequence. Just as UCU was falling foul of our anti-discrimination laws and harming British academia on so many levels, it <a href="http://www.jcpa.org/JCPA/Templates/ShowPage.asp?DRIT=3&DBID=1&LNGID=1&TMID=111&FID=253&PID=0&IID=2051&TTL=The_Academic_Boycott_of_Israel:_A_Review_of_the_Five-Year_UK_Campaign_to_Defeat_It">seems</a> that some good was being brought about as a result of this farcical fiasco, after all:<br /><br /><span style="color:#ff6666;">As a result of the UCU boycott vote in May, requests from UK academics to work with Israeli academics have dramatically increased.</span><br /><span style="font-size:78%;">[hat tip: </span><a href="http://www.solomonia.com/blog/headlineblog/archives/2008/03/ronnie-fraser-the-academic-boy/index.shtml"><span style="font-size:78%;">Solomonia</span></a><span style="font-size:78%;">]</span><br /><br />This was obviously on the cards, given events previously observed in this blog (in the update to <a href="http://boycotted-uk-academic.blogspot.com/2007/10/hello-shalom-hello-salaam.html">this</a> post; see also <a href="http://www.engageonline.org.uk/blog/article.php?id=1486">Engage</a>'s coverage). Back in late October of last year, soon after the official boycott campaign (UCU Motion 30) was finally recognized by UCU as the racist and discriminatory campaign that it is, the <a href="http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1192380666621&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull">press</a> reported some damage-limitation on the part of British academia. Remember how, in<br /><br /><span style="color:#ff6666;">an effort to promote cooperation between Israel and the UK Universities, in the light of the defunct academic boycott, a delegation of senior British university heads visited Israel</span><br /><br />Well, as this latest analysis suggests, it seems the visit's aims have now been answered, whether in result of research networks established during this trip; or otherwise - the boycott having caused individual academics to take their own initiative to counteract the damaging effects of the boycott campaign. Note that academic cooperation between Israel and the UK was described, even back then, as being very strong already, with a "high level collaboration" between these two sets of national academies. How perverse, yet somehow heartening, to think that the one concrete result of this bonkers boycott is the very opposite of what was intended: effectively to increase & strengthen precisely those ties the boycotters were seeking so belligerently to break through their damaging campaign.</div>Boycotted British Academichttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05336249818541398673noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8155767247110659836.post-62864263271198920882008-03-02T02:02:00.044+00:002008-03-26T00:08:43.674+00:00BDS (Disambiguation)I just caught myself perfecting <a href="http://boycotted-uk-academic.blogspot.com/2008/02/dying-for-degree-at-college-threatened.html">my last post</a> - pointless, I know, but I can't seem to help myself, this incident not being an isolated one (in the unlikely event that anyone's noticed, I hope it's not too annoying!). Reading the post again, it occurred to me that some of you might not know what BDS stands for - those with the great luck not to work in academia at the present moment, thereby spared such coerced intimacy with this whole bonkers boycott (I had in mind certain friends & family members in this fortunate position...). So I thought I'd check to see what Google brought up, in case an additional link would be required to avoid confusion. It turns out my investigations merit their own post as what I found is something of a new definition and, with it, a bit of a chuckle - so here I am, sharing some cheer.<br /><br />The acronym had previously caused me to laugh, at some earlier point in my encounter with the boycotters and their mode of argument (if it can be called that), the nature of which set off one of those <a href="http://boycotted-uk-academic.blogspot.com/2007/11/in-whirl-of-walt-mearsh-show-some.html">sick</a> associations<strong>:</strong><span style="color:#ff0000;">**</span> but for a missing 'M' at the end, the acronym seems really rather apt in terms of capturing the (intellectual?) whipping these people seem to enjoy so!<br /><br />The Google search brought more mirth for it turns out that BDS actually stands for quite a few things, in addition to <strong>Boycott, Divestment & Sanctions</strong> (against Israel, of course, silently included in the acronym, without need even to specify a <a href="http://normblog.typepad.com/normblog/2007/05/like_the_aut_bo.html">country beginning with the letter "I"</a> - since this type of thinking has become so commonplace that one can now just automatically assume Israel is the target of such actions - duh!). <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BDS">Here</a> you'll find all the possibilities for BDS.<br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgZAFUhMvNCmVCxkrDsgya_ox2NUy_UkoiZXl_OvCmwyjJW_8libyTITALcFHu6nFsOScI5AGv88TvTHTnWs4jbU9BuFgq_G3PJ300mB9yw-QEdZ40zx6_zgUH3DImWuMCQc07SVG98UXc/s1600-h/bush.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5172982408524842994" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; CURSOR: hand" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgZAFUhMvNCmVCxkrDsgya_ox2NUy_UkoiZXl_OvCmwyjJW_8libyTITALcFHu6nFsOScI5AGv88TvTHTnWs4jbU9BuFgq_G3PJ300mB9yw-QEdZ40zx6_zgUH3DImWuMCQc07SVG98UXc/s200/bush.jpg" border="0" /></a><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bush_Derangement_Syndrome">This</a> is what amused me:<br /><br /><span style="color:#ff6600;"><strong>Bush Derangement Syndrome (BDS)</strong> is a political term ... to describe a perceived tendency by some American liberals to blame President George W. Bush for virtually every ill in the world. Another noted facet of BDS-like behavior is that it may appear to be a merely reflexive opposition to any position advocated by Bush for no other reason than that Bush happens to be advocating it.<br /><br />Krauthammer, a former psychiatrist who earned his M.D. from Harvard Medical School, defined BDS as "the acute onset of paranoia in otherwise normal people in reaction to the policies, the presidency — nay — the very existence of George W. Bush"</span><br /><br />While I hope it's patent that I'm no Bush fan myself, I rather enjoyed the obvious parallels between the varieties of derangement on display in both these phenomena denominated BDS. In the above formulation, substitute "Israel" for "Bush" (and often they are, insanely, as we know, what with <a href="http://boycotted-uk-academic.blogspot.com/search?q=mearsh">W&M</a> et al) and the paranormal in these two version of BDS seem one & the same, indistinguishable -- and just plain mad. Engaging in a bit of cross-fertilization here, I propose that henceforth, for our purposes, BDS should be disambiguated to mean <strong>Boycott Derangement Syndrome</strong>, for that just about gets to the essence of this boycott movement!<br /><br />~~~~<br /><br /><span style="color:#ff0000;">**</span> The link is to the para in square brackets on how sick humour seems to have become a prime coping strategy through all this madness.Boycotted British Academichttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05336249818541398673noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8155767247110659836.post-14404253467997665762008-02-28T23:11:00.046+00:002008-05-27T12:14:50.233+01:00"Dying for a Degree" at a College threatened by the BoycottWhen the academic boycotters rationalize their racist campaign on the basis that it's necessary to protest against interference with the right to education (<a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/steven-rose-why-pick-on-israel-because-its-actions-are-wrong-451648.html">e.g.</a>), they obviously don't have in mind the sort of interference experienced - day in, day out, year after year - by students at places like Sapir College in Israel's south, under attack from the rockets being fired from Gaza, now culminating, as a result of the <a href="http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/958892.html">latest barrage</a>, in the inevitable: the fatality of a student on campus. The boycotters seem incapable of assimilating this Israeli experience for it's always predetermined as that of the bad guys involved in colonialism & apartheid, and all manner of other preposterous rhetorical exaggeration by which this conflict is described in popular discourse - by definition, if these are the terms by which the situation is conceived, suffering will always be one-sided; as will be blame for that suffering.<br /><br />Meanwhile, today, a student at the College <a href="http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3512413,00.html">explains</a> more clearly for us what is really going on outside the fantasy world imagined by the boycotters, a perspective which we can be sure will go unrepresented over here in Boycotting Britannia, since people here only seem to perceive a certain kind of suffering, only that which can be countenanced in the prevailing simplistic (and nauseatingly self-serving) narrative given to the conflict.<br /><br />I wonder if the students who campaign up and down my campus for the education rights of their Palestinian counterparts might also spare a thought for the students who, like them, are just trying to study for a degree, albeit in Israel whose scapegoated pariah status today means getting an education under fire, effectively in a war zone, without any likelihood of being shown international solidarity - quite the contrary, for this gets them boycotts and divestment instead! Were our solidarity actions to be devised on the basis of a less selective conception of this conflict, no doubt we'd manage to come up with better ideas than this shameful one-sided, pathetic posturing encapsulated in the boycott movement; we'd settle upon actions of real solidarity, which actually seek peace rather than sorely retard it, as do those pushed for by the <a href="http://boycotted-uk-academic.blogspot.com/2008/03/bds.html">BDS</a> crowd. But will these bonkers boycotters even pause to consider this, without immediately and automatically dismissing it as the work of some Ziocon propaganda outfit? Why, oh why, in this era in which the "<a href="http://www.engageonline.org.uk/blog/article.php?id=1615">Livingstone formulation</a>" reigns supreme, do I still have the naivety ask?!<br /><br />In the words of the Sapir student, Omri Keinan, describing the conditions in which he is trying to acquire his college degree:<br /><br /><span style="color:#ff6666;">What you will find if you come to Sapir is reinforced police presence, red signs that include instructions for cases of emergency, and loudspeakers that on occasion sound a hair-raising alarm that gives us <a href="http://blog.z-word.com/2008/02/15-seconds-is-all-you-have/"><span style="color:#993399;">less than 10 seconds</span></a> to seek cover in the face of incoming rockets. </span><br /><span style="color:#ff6666;"></span><br /><span style="color:#ff6666;">At Sapir College you will not find students sitting on the grass. They are scared to be left without shelter should rockets land. But you will find great fear here.<br /><br /><strong>Sacrificing our life</strong></span><br /><span style="color:#ff6666;"></span><br /><span style="color:#ff6666;">It happens almost every day: A “Color Red” alert, Qassam rockets landing, and all this followed by tears, mass panic, and concerned phone calls from home. It happens to us during classes, it happens during breaks, and it happens during difficult exams.<br /></span><br /><span style="color:#ff6666;">We have already sustained property damage to the college before, but this time we are dealing with the worst possible scenario – the death of a student. To my regret, despite our army and the reinforced security deployment at school,<span style="color:#ff0000;">**</span> I do not have the confidence to say that tomorrow’s Qassam rocket will not hit me or any one of my friends at the college.</span><br /><span style="color:#ff6666;"></span><br /><span style="color:#ff6666;">Can you comprehend that this is how students in Israel go about their studies? Do we need to sacrifice our lives for the sake of an academic degree?</span><br /><br />~~~~<br /><br /><span style="color:#ff0000;">**</span> <span style="color:#ff6666;">Most of the college's classrooms are not fortified, and on order from the Israel Defense Forces Home Front Command, some 40 classrooms and a third of the laboratories are not in use, because they are vulnerable to rockets and too far from a protected area. [<a href="http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/959332.html">source</a>]</span>Boycotted British Academichttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05336249818541398673noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8155767247110659836.post-59140191740307241972008-02-20T15:05:00.040+00:002008-03-04T04:37:30.845+00:00Somebody Noticed!Miracle of miracles.<br /><br />Today, at <a href="http://video.twofour.co.uk/play/video.asp?videoID=2729">Prime Minister's Questions</a>, <a href="http://www.louiseellman.co.uk/">Louise Ellman MP</a> asked the PM what steps the government would be taking in view of the recent release of the Community Security Trust's <a href="http://www.thecst.org.uk/docs/Incidents_Report_07.pdf">Antisemitic Incidents Report 2007</a>. The PM's response highlighted the problem of antisemitism on campus, describing this as one area where the worsening of such incidents has been most noted. He stressed that this was completely unacceptable. What a relief, I thought - some one's been noticing what our campuses have become. (If the given PMQ link doesn't work, there are others <a href="http://www.number10.gov.uk/output/Page306.asp">here</a>, depending on your software - scroll to 25:35 for the question on CST).<br /><br />I hadn't realized until now that the report covered campus life in such depth, to the point that Gordon Brown should highlight just this in his response. Perhaps UCU will now start taking seriously its claim to be leading in the struggle against racism? Somehow, I doubt it, given the "evasive, disingenuous and complacent" response UCU has given thus far to these problems (<a href="http://www.engageonline.org.uk/blog/article.php?id=839">e.g.</a>), not to mention the fact that UCU played host, so long & so graciously, to that racist campaign which is the academic boycott (a fact which is, of course, more like the elephant in the room!).<br /><br />Here are some extracts from the report which pertain to incidents relating to our campuses:<br /><br /><span style="color:#ff6666;">In 59 incidents the victims were Jewish students, academics or other student bodies. This is a 228 per cent rise from 2006, probably because of increased reporting by students to CST. Out of 59 incidents, 31 took place on campus and 28 off campus. Six incidents occurred in the direct context of student political campaigning.<br /><br />The 59 incidents recorded by CST in 2007 in which the victims were students, student bodies or academics represent a considerable rise from the 18 incidents recorded of that type in 2006, 11 in 2005 and 21 in 2004.<br /><br />The large rise may also be partly due to political tensions on campuses. The ongoing campaign to boycott Israeli academics continued during 2007, although few incidents made direct reference to the boycott campaign and any indirect impact it may have had on antisemitic incident levels is difficult to quantify. Rather than indicating a significant change in the environment in which Jewish students live and study, the increase is more likely to mean that a true picture is beginning to emerge of the challenges faced by Jewish students on and off campus.<br /><br />Of the 31 incidents that took place on campus, 12 involved direct contact between incident perpetrator and victim – for instance, by verbal abuse or physical assault – while the remainder mostly involved antisemitic graffiti or hate-mail. A larger proportion of the incidents off campus, 23 out of 28 incidents, involved direct contact between perpetrator and victim. Academics were the victims in two incidents, student unions in six and students, either individually or collectively (for instance in cases of antisemitic graffiti in student buildings) in the other 51 incidents recorded.<br /><br />Six on-campus incidents took place in the direct context of political campaigning.<br /><br />Examples of antisemitic incidents that took place on campus in 2007 include: </span><br /><br /><span style="color:#ff6666;"><ul><li>Swastikas and other antisemitic graffiti were scratched into the door of a Jewish student’s room in a hall of residence</li><li>A Jewish student was taking part in a demonstration at Manchester University when a Muslim student grabbed her poster from her and said that Jews will be banned from campus.</span></li></ul>....and it goes on listing more despicable events which have occurred on or surrounding our campuses (detailed on p 17 and 18 of the given link).<br /><br />The Engage <a href="http://www.engageonline.org.uk/blog/article.php?id=1651#">posting</a> on the CST report tries to give a positive gloss in closing:<br /><br /><span style="color:#ff6666;">Above all, we must maintain perspective. Jewish life in Britain is overwhelmingly positive, and it is this that should define us, rather than antisemitism.</span><br /><br />Undoubtedly. But who has such choices? I wouldn't know about Jewish life in Britain being overwhelmingly positive since my perspective has been so seriously clouded by campus life. And campus life is (sorry...) a real bitch! These shocking events catalogued by the CST's report are just the tip of the iceberg in terms of understanding the incidents by which antisemitism is sustained on campus.<br /><br />Most (some?) of us don't speak out in the sense required to give an account of what lies beneath. I don't report at all (this blog excepted?) - not the antisemitic experiences I have had to endure as a result of having to spend a lot of time on campus here in Boycotting Britannia; nor those I've experienced by dint of the responsibilities which flow from being in this job, in this place, at this time. Frankly, I don't know where to begin isolating individual incidents which could be catalogued in such a report out of what feels like an undifferentiated whole phenomenon which exists pervasively and is constituted systemically.<br /><br />Some of us struggle even to find the words. Even anonymously in a blog. Clearly: the draft-post tally currently stands at 101 and counting...<br /><br />None of this is overwhelmingly positive. Not my own experience of becoming BBA; not that of the students at my university, some of whom have cried in front of me when discussing what their life is like on campus and whose accounts even brought tears to my eyes (tears suppressed so as to maintain a calm & composed front for the sake of the students, since I imagined it would make it worse for them to know otherwise!).<br /><br />Or am I loosing perspective? <em>(BBA asks rhetorically)</em>Boycotted British Academichttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05336249818541398673noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8155767247110659836.post-44411939405624161602008-02-20T14:57:00.026+00:002008-03-01T17:40:17.051+00:00I'm Back!First, BBA's free wifi went on holiday. Well, one of BBA's neighbours must have gone on holiday with their wifi in tow. Note: BBA did not go on holiday. BBA does not remember the last holiday. Alright, that's an exaggeration - BBA remembers it well and longingly as something which happened a very, very long time ago. Certainly not the summer last, spent, very exclusively, getting way too acquainted with the thoughts and arguments (more accurately: some bastardized approximation of the same!) of some seriously messed-up boycotters.<br /><br />Then, BBA's computer took sick leave - the whole thing went to pot. BBA seems to have taken leave of a similar nature, in one way or another. The computer's still bust and I'm writing this from a borrowed computer. The desktop at work - being, well, at work - is not a suitable substitute in my boycotted state since I've grown to limit time spent on my toxic, hate-filled campus to a strict minimum. It's inconceivable that BBA would have survived long had BBA had to be at work for computer use (an activity which keeps BBA busy for pretty much the entire time - with the advent of the boycott, ridiculously so!) and instead BBA has been rediscovering how liberating pen & paper can be when working through a difficult argument (not forgetting the scissors & tape!). None of which is much good for blogging, hence the non-posting, for which I apologize profusely...<br /><br />I wish, in addition to a better loaned-computer, I could also borrow another me, better in the sense of being able actually to live the life I'm meant to lead since BBA does not seem to be able to do it anymore really. Perhaps something like a <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Stepford_Wives">Stepford Wives</a> equivalent of BBA who just smiles and takes it (on the understanding, of course, that I'm the one controlling the humanoid robot of me!).<br /><br />Anyway, I just wanted to let y'all know what's been going on, especially since some sorry souls have started to post nasty comments on here and I don't want to leave the impression that I feel boycotted even from this blog! The non-blogging is not causally related...<br /><br />The comments are for the rubbish, of course, as the wonderful <a href="http://www.littleatoms.com/engage/30012008/anthony_julius.mp3">Anthony Julius</a> reminded us <a href="http://www.goldsmiths.ac.uk/just-change/hirsh/">recently</a> (if you want to listen, turn up the volume to max - his hilarious spin on rubbish is roughly at 04:10 for a couple of minutes or so). As Julius recalls, in closing (14:10ish): <em>rubbish is rubbish, but the history of rubbish is scholarship</em>. So, in the interest of any such scholarship, the comments will remain for posterity.<br /><br />And, to let y'all know... I'm back! (I hope?!)Boycotted British Academichttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05336249818541398673noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8155767247110659836.post-69374985227212832622007-12-23T19:45:00.009+00:002008-02-23T19:18:40.432+00:00The Bank(rupt)sy of 'Solidarity'When I first heard, a couple of weeks ago, that the British graffiti artist <a href="http://www.banksy.co.uk/">Banksy</a> was off to Bethlehem to paint a section of the wall, I thought: how typical. Here's an artist whose country is presently involved in not one but two occupations and he goes off to show solidarity with the occupied somewhere else entirely - someone else's occupied!<br /><br />It's par for the course over here in Boycotting Britannia. As we know, Palestinians are the totems of the world's suffering and the Israelis, the ultimate bad guys who, alone in this universe, attract boycotts & so forth.<br /><br />We know why Banksy was likely to choose a wall in Bethlehem over, say, <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/11/world/middleeast/11murals.html">Baghdad</a>: think security, think basic amenities and it's not hard to see why this would be a good deal more attractive an option for these 'brave souls' in the international solidarity crowd (not to mention the press opps it affords since our journos are apparently of equivalent bravery, going by the sick obsessions of places like <a href="http://boycotted-uk-academic.blogspot.com/search/label/Guardian%20of%20the%20Boycott%20%28CiF%29">CiF</a>). We know, from experience, that these solidarity types don't want to suffer personally. Otherwise our bonkers boycotters might have suggested boycotting their own academic institutions instead of Israel's, on account of our occupations (plural) and the absence of any of our universities having "<a href="http://www.bmj.com/cgi/content/full/335/7611/124">publicly condemned what is being done</a>" in our names as part of those occupations - or, if that defies logic (boycotting of self), they might at least have suggested boycotting the academic institutions of the USA. That won't do, though, oh no - think of all those pay-checks & all those research grants they'd have to boycott & all those prestigious academic conferences and journals from which they'd have to be excluded.<br /><br />What I hadn't anticipated was that Banksy's gesture would spectacularly backfire, perceived not as showing solidarity but denigration, and causing widespread offence to Palestinians in the process.<br /><br />This is one of the offending pictures Banksy painted on the wall:<br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh7UQQuwXgSewYUNfnn_MuTcaNz2wTehJ92QYYaHzmlB2j94-yBwowpUWfSZITfkJNIcq9dKQeEavtCb6lbZ3S5U3dW6DKo4G5xE6f2mgxH1zW9mEEtWw86Gh_u9UqFXrq5z-kqCrgA0kM/s1600-h/banksy+no+paint.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5147266250444349458" style="CURSOR: hand" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh7UQQuwXgSewYUNfnn_MuTcaNz2wTehJ92QYYaHzmlB2j94-yBwowpUWfSZITfkJNIcq9dKQeEavtCb6lbZ3S5U3dW6DKo4G5xE6f2mgxH1zW9mEEtWw86Gh_u9UqFXrq5z-kqCrgA0kM/s200/banksy+no+paint.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><br />Palestinians didn't much appreciate being likened to a donkey in Banksy's representation here of IDF checks on identity papers. In Arabic - as indeed in Hebrew - the word is also used to mean idiot! The upshot is that the picture is no longer - this is how the relevant section of the <a href="http://www.santasghetto.com/wall.asp">wall</a> looks today:<br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgyNkRpxsNiHlYL1UqwNdvqVPveRiC4CTYbo4Ml6jm6IPaGGfaduZawFTQoF0BGh2d40__I8nXOBdVobtlKw_akEd-lAwuz-lX8eizY2QywkoKF-Uz_fr6JGonY-TEMW2uJpQBoNi-NJZU/s1600-h/donkey_buff.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5147267130912645154" style="CURSOR: hand" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgyNkRpxsNiHlYL1UqwNdvqVPveRiC4CTYbo4Ml6jm6IPaGGfaduZawFTQoF0BGh2d40__I8nXOBdVobtlKw_akEd-lAwuz-lX8eizY2QywkoKF-Uz_fr6JGonY-TEMW2uJpQBoNi-NJZU/s200/donkey_buff.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><br />Given what I've seen of our solidarity movement here in Boycotting Britannia, I should really have known better and anticipated this. What with the experience of this whole sorry story of the academic boycott, we know very well that these people are all desperate to <em><strong>do</strong></em> something but they don't really want to get involved. They don't want to <a href="http://www.engageonline.org.uk/archives/index.php?id=14">engage</a>. Instead, they like to reduce the situation to one of good & evil; they want to have someone who can be blamed for everything. What they don't realize, however, is that this constructs an "<a href="http://www.engageonline.org.uk/blog/comment.php?id=1561">infantilizing and dehumanizing representation of Palestinians</a>" - the sort of construction perceived in Banksy's representation of Palestinians here which has so caused offence. In ignorance, they opt for the most inappropriate forms of solidarity. Like proposing a racist boycott of Israeli academics!Boycotted British Academichttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05336249818541398673noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8155767247110659836.post-25901637877060167522007-12-20T22:57:00.001+00:002008-03-02T19:22:41.582+00:00Update on the Bigot's PlaygroundI checked the UCU List again at some point after the <a href="http://boycotted-uk-academic.blogspot.com/2007/10/ucu-activist-list.html">last</a> posting on the subject. Eight messages had, by that stage, been posted on there since I'd last stopped by, half of which - no less! - were castigating Israel for something or other. We're regaled with the greatest of detail, you understand, when it comes to Jewish wrong-doing - however obscure, you might think, since not even Britain's wrong-doing is accorded this degree of scrutiny, especially not its occupations (plural); and however obviously irrelevant to the core business of UCU. Obvious & malignantly obsessive, that is, to every one other than the boycotters who have made the List their own little bigot's playground for acting out their various messed-up issues.<br /><br />I find the List is so horrendous & frightening each time I take a look that I need a while to build up resistance to log on again; so I've ended up doing it every three days or so, to keep things as healthy as can be expected in the circumstances.<br /><br />So toxic is this forum that I quickly stopped allowing these messages to pollute my inbox in real time. I 'graduated' onto the daily option, so that an indecipherable digest would, day in, day out, keep me abreast of what passes for union activism & international solidarity in Boycotting Britannia. When even that was too much, I switched to the weekly option; and now, dear reader, I do it in my own time, when I can face it!<br /><br />Pretty infrequently, as I said. But last time, when I found those eight new messages, four of which were bashing Israel, that was the last straw and I resolved not to check back again. Effectively, I became unwilling to be an active member of UCU if this is what it takes. Since then, I've been pondering with renewed vigour those <a href="http://boycotted-uk-academic.blogspot.com/2007/08/new-member-for-ucu.html">perennial questions</a> about my membership in UCU and I've been on the verge of resigning. Nothing out of the ordinary there then!<br /><br />Today, however, I was catching up over at <a href="http://hurryupharry.bloghouse.net/archives/2007/12/20/why_did_the_british_council_invite_judy_price_to_curate_this_project.php">Harry's Place</a> and the name of one of the List's <em>boycotters-extraordinaire </em>came up so I braved it and logged on, to see what's up. Sure enough: the first two messages I came across concerned - you guessed it - Jewish wrong-doing again (from him, of course). I couldn't be bothered to read the rest - I mean, what's the point?<br /><br />It's beyond clear that the List has been colonized by boycotters acting out their identity issues & prejudices and every one else is apparently so put off by the spectacle that they are giving the List a very wide berth, just like this BBA was trying to do! In short, the List has been rendered redundant thanks to its having been trifled with by these boycotters and the use they make of it for the purposes of demarcating the boundaries of their sickness.<br /><br />That being said, despite all this, I still find myself self-berating for having found no better way than this to react to these bullies. I totally agree with one of the valiant anti-boycotters on there, the same heroic academic I quoted in the <a href="http://boycotted-uk-academic.blogspot.com/2007/10/ucu-activist-list.html">last</a> post, when he says:<br /><br /><span style="color:#ff6666;">as a Unionist, I cannot and will not abrogate my responsibility to challenge all the spectre of antisemitism wherever it appears, including and especially, in the midst of my own Union</span><br /><br />This was in response to the exasperated cry voiced by one amidst what I hope is the silenced multitude of UCU members aghast at the List having been corrupted to serve the boycotters' identity crises & prejudices. At regular intervals, some voice of reason tries to intervene to suggest a separate list be created just for the pleasure of the bully-boycotting-babies wanting to throw their toys out of the pram (invariably when an anti-boycotter rightly raises the issue of antisemitism) so that the rest of the union can get on with its core business.<br /><br />The expert on antisemitism is right, of course, to flag the important union business which this shameful run of events brings up: if the union is to stand for anything given how bad things have become here in Boycotting Britannia, surely it's to take a firm stand against racism and not allow itself to be overtaken in the waging of the racist campaign which is this bonkers boycott. A campaign which apparently seems to have survived the anti-discrimination & human rights laws which halted the official boycott, existing now in the on-tap outlet which UCU gives for what is effectively bigoted propaganda targeting the familiar scapegoat - since virtually no other wrong-doing gets posted on there, including Britain's own! - sent out courtesy of UCU HQ to a group of academics whose opinions percolate, as they do, through to the rest of society. Judging by what wrong-doing is publicized in this list, it's the familiar target which gets ascribed as the font & essence of all evil. Like I say, pure racist propaganda and this, from a union which prides itself for its anti-racism!Boycotted British Academichttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05336249818541398673noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8155767247110659836.post-5497678283584195102007-12-18T19:15:00.000+00:002007-12-20T15:33:23.657+00:00Of Boycotts & Blaming<a href="http://www.engageonline.org.uk/blog/article.php?id=1561">Engage</a> give publicity to a dreadful piece by a boycott-agitator. (It's critical of Engage so I guess that's why it's cross-posted.) In it, we find many foolish, weak arguments but I'll just focus on the one which literally drives me insane whenever I encounter it.<br /><br />It's the oft-repeated claim that the anti-boycott campaign gives the<br /><br /><span style="color:#cc33cc;">implication that Israel’s Jewish identity should protect it from criticism</span><br /><br />I fail to see how this implication arises out of the anti-boycott movement. Why can't people get the simplest of distinctions, between proportionate criticism, on the one hand, and demonization and scapegoating, on the other?<br /><br />This sort of nonsense claim is crawling all over the I/P debate, even making it, in another incarnation, into UCU motion 30 itself, as <a href="http://boycotted-uk-academic.blogspot.com/2007/10/google-searches.html">previously</a> discussed. This is frankly dangerous & anti-racists really need to get a grip before they completely render vacuous values for which we've long struggled.<br /><br />Good, at least, that even Graun's CiF didn't see fit to publish this (he's been on <a href="http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/ben_white/profile.html">there</a> in the past, in similarly infuriating form). Perhaps Graun will start having some standards, however low? Perhaps it'll stop publishing pieces such as this which are based on a complete falsification of history and fail to make a single argument with the slightest cogency in favour of a boycott? Miracles might happen... Not.<br /><br />I think it would be fitting for me to answer this boycott-agitator by reproducing a letter I came across recently. It was sent to Irshad Manji who has predictably suffered simply for the fact that she does not engage in the blame-game being played out by these bonkers boycotters:<br /><br /><span style="color:#cc33cc;">The Serenity Prayer for Muslims…<br /><br />God grant Muslims the serenity to accept the things we can not change, the power to change the things we can, and the wisdom to know the difference.<br /><br />Serenity to accept the things we cannot change…<br /><br />Israel clearly is not going anywhere. Muslims can either accept this and put our efforts toward improving our societies. Or, fueled by the prevalent Muslim hatred of Israel, we can allow violence to simply become the “Muslim way” of dealing with any problem, calling it resistance, and placing tribal pride above the lives and souls of our children.<br /><br />Power to change the things we can…<br /><br />While this fighting is often thought to be the only way to empower Palestinians, and even all Muslims, it’s really nothing more than the power to self-destruct. Our goals of creating a better life for Palestinians and Muslims are not being accomplished. Instead, life is becoming unbearable across the Arab world. Is that power?<br /><br />Muslims are not powerless. We have the power to do what no one else ultimately can. We can stop the violence. But we need to convince other Muslims that this behavior is vile, rather than telling non-Muslims that this is not Islam.<br /><br />Stopping this strain from flowing through our faith and cultures doesn’t mean that bad feelings won’t remain and that Palestinians won’t continue to feel that Israel has humiliated them. It means that as Palestinians get back on the road to dignity, trust will be gained and they’ll eventually be able to give their children something to to look forward to: life.<br /><br />This is the only chance that Muslims have for gaining the respect we crave from the rest of the world, and it is the only way the Middle East will ever become a viable part of the global community.<br /><br />Do Muslims value our pride more than our children? Does Islam not have the power within it to inspire us to create just, safe societies? <strong>If Islam means peace’ then we should make it, rather than waiting for someone else to first take blame</strong>.<br /><br />Wisdom to know the difference…<br /><br />One would expect it to be Muslims in the West, enjoying safety, opportunity and freedom, who would have the most wisdom in dealing with our current state of affairs. But this doesn’t seem to be the case. Rather, many Muslims in America and Europe instigate the hatred of Israel while doing little to demand an end to Islamist violence. While done in the spirit of supporting their Muslim brothers and sisters, this actually only <strong>prolongs the bloodshed and sentences Palestinians in particular to even more violence, indignity and death</strong>.<br /><br />While Muslims in the West are pushing for Islam to gain better recognition, and sometimes even for Sharia law to enter the court system so that we may feel validated in our faith, others within the Muslim world, Afghanistan for example, realize there is a price to be paid for someone else’s version of Islamic law. (And it will always be someone else’s version). It’s noteworthy that there appears to be <strong>more outspoken reformist Muslims in Arab countries than there are in the West</strong>, because they are the ones paying the price for this violence.<br /><br />Muslims face the choice to promote violence (which will never improve our situation) or end it and its instigation. It’s frightening, but we are actually the ones with all the power. We can use it to hold the world hostage by allowing Islamic extremists to be a continuing threat, Palestinians, Iraqis and Afghanis ultimately paying the biggest price. On the other hand, we can exercise our power to finally bring an end to this insanity, start the Middle East on the road to recovery, build the productive societies that we boast have been Islam’s legacy, and save Islam from what’s looking like an unspeakable fate.<br /><br />Amen…<br /><br />Few are more in need of the serenity prayer than Muslims are. We’re likely not alcoholics, but we’re becoming addicted to violence as a means to a non-end. It’s time we hosted our own intervention, while the Middle East still has a chance to become more than poor and Islam still has a chance to mean peace.</span><br /><br />Written by Amina Khan, Boston via <a href="http://www.irshadmanji.com/im-muslim-refusenik-letters-archive-part-016">Irshad Manji</a>Boycotted British Academichttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05336249818541398673noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8155767247110659836.post-22107652196651362822007-12-17T18:04:00.001+00:002008-01-19T20:16:40.790+00:00First InstinctsThe crucial place of Israeli academia in the advancement of science has been recognized in the latest compilation of <em>Scientific American</em>'s <a href="http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=sciam-50-2007">list </a>of 50 of the world's leading innovators, just published. In fact, Israeli researchers dominate the section on neurological insights, contributing half the entries in the field, thanks to advances in treating neurological disorders such as Alzheimer's and Parkinson's diseases. How can anyone suggest boycotting this?<br /><br />The plot thickens. When I <a href="http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1196847358550&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull">read</a> about the story of one group of researchers recognized in this list, my first instinct was to think it showed traces of a silent boycott, that well hidden but no doubt (and therefore) potent campaign which likely precedes and succeeds UCU's shameful Motion 30 and the official campaign. That's the thing about the silent boycott. When something as absurd as this happens, one reaches for the explanation which is so readily suggested here in Boycotting Britannia:<br /><br /><span style="color:#ff6666;">Ben-Jacob told <em>The Jerusalem Post</em> he was very happy his and Baruchi's work was being recognized, especially since when he first sent an article on it for publication to the prestigious journal <em>Nature</em> along with recommendations from three Nobel Prize laureates, it was rejected on the grounds of "not being of general interest"</span><br /><br />Do I need to add that <em>Nature </em>is based here in Boycotting Britannia?!<br /><br /><strong><span style="font-size:130%;color:#ff0000;">UPDATE</span></strong><br />You know that saying about always trusting one's first instincts? Well, it seems that I should have been more trusting. Remembering how silent and not-so-silent boycotts have cropped up in our journals, I read with interest the links sent to me by one of the lovely <strong>BBA Forumniks</strong> which suggest the people over at <em>Nature </em>are not always very clear on the wrongs of boycotting Israeli academics, having lent the journal's <a href="http://www.nature.com/nature/focus/israelipalestinianconflict/index.html">pages</a> to a lengthy debate on the subject a few years back, perhaps when the review process for the Ben-Jacob/Baruchi submission was underway. That being said - although I find it truly alarming that the question of a boycott should have been posed in reference to Israel, in no way the obvious target for a boycott and therefore absurd for it to drive a theoretical enquiry in such a prestigious journal - the exercise did produce a very strong <a href="http://www.engageonline.org.uk/journal/index.php?journal_id=15&article_id=61">piece</a> against the boycott which was particularly important & compelling.<br /><br />That a silent boycott should come to be associated with this otherwise prestigious journal just shows how damaging & bad this boycott is proving to be for all concerned - in this case (one amongst many suffering the boycott's damaging effects, as this BBA can attest from personal experience!), for Britain and the prestige of its journals & academe. Thanks to the potentiality of this uncontrollable silent boycott - this potentiality being its most emboldening characteristic: when one doesn't know the size of the beast, its size can be exaggerated - in the not-knowing, it can grow in size, stretching even to encompass prestigious journals which shouldn't be vulnerable to abasement in this way; but necessarily are, given the damage which this boycott movement has done to British academia.Boycotted British Academichttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05336249818541398673noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8155767247110659836.post-82225037720485992382007-12-02T20:21:00.000+00:002007-12-17T21:23:57.888+00:00UCU Activist List (aka the "Bigot's Playground")Anyone following this bonkers boycott might well think the whole thing's over, finished, one for the history books (see under: racism in the British union movement).<br /><br />Not judging by the UCU activist list - aka - the <a href="http://hurryupharry.bloghouse.net/archives/2007/10/04/how_did_you_manage_to_mistake_a_campaign_of_discriminatory_exclusions_for_a_campaign_of_solidarity.php">bigot's playground</a>: we are already familiar with the sort of bigotry which comes courtesy of this List, since it's made its appearance on <a href="http://boycotted-uk-academic.blogspot.com/2007/10/round-2-boycotters-v-lord-lester.html">here</a> before (the link is to that post's update and to the anon. comments it attracted, some of which have also appeared on <a href="http://hurryupharry.bloghouse.net/archives/2007/10/08/university_college_union_activists_list_what_was_said.php">Harry's Place</a>).<span style="color:#ff0000;">**</span> Yes, that toxic forum which UCU offers, and here's the official line, to encourage its members to become more <a href="http://www.ucu.org.uk/index.cfm?articleid=2813">active</a> in union business. This is classic UCU-speak which needs translating. In reality, it's the UCU encouraging its members to become victims of the boycotters' bullying, for this is how I've experienced the period since acquiring the 'privilege' of having my inbox polluted by the filth which passes for international solidarity work on there.<br /><br />Just for confirmation that the boycott movement is as alive & kicking as ever within UCU politics, one recent thread on the list ends with the following war cry:<br /><br /><span style="color:#ff6666;">Let the mad people rant on... The boycott just will not go away! Why should it ... </span><br />(note the absence of a question mark!)<br /><br />So that you can get the measure of the truly poisonous nature of this debating forum, this last message was written to end an unending conversation which had caused one academic, an expert in the field, to exclaim at an earlier stage in the debate:<br /><br /><span style="color:#ff6666;">I don't think I have ever seen such an archetype acrobatic of apologetics for contemporary antisemitism listed in so perfect a fashion. May I use it as a research document?<br /></span><br />I am prevented from talking in too much detail about the List as it operates according to the most <a href="http://www.engageonline.org.uk/blog/comment.php?id=1212">Stalinist</a> of structures & rules, resulting in the eventual <a href="http://www.engageonline.org.uk/blog/article.php?id=1299#">exclusion</a> from the list of some of the best anti-boycotters posting on there. I say Stalinist because only anti-boycotters have been excluded in this way (never the boycotters); and only the most effective & trenchant among them, those posters putting arguments to which the boycotters could find no response other than this dirty trick of exclusion. I say Stalinist because you don't get excluded for posting antisemitism; you get excluded for quoting it outside the list! It's OK to post antisemitism to 700-odd people but it's not OK to give such antisemitism yet further publicity beyond this 'select' public! I say Stalinist because anti-boycotters have been prevented from posting messages from outside sources, even though many on the list do so without objection. Frequently! Only the anti-boycotters have been <a href="http://www.engageonline.org.uk/blog/comment.php?id=1299">silenced</a> in this way. [the link is to David Hirsh's comment on that thread]<br /><br />Think of the ugliness which appears on an I/P thread on any day of any year on <a href="http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/index.html">CiF</a>. Think boycotting academics with apparently WAY too much time on their hands. And you've roughly got the picture!<br /><br />The List is dominated by the boycott movement and arguments about the antisemitism which it symbolizes, together with other nefarious manifestations of the politics sustaining the movement. It is not about becoming more active in union business; it is about ensuring that everyone is so detained in this one issue that they have neither the time, nor the space, nor even the will to discuss anything else, let alone the bread & butter issues which a union should be deliberating, especially at a time such as the present, when British academia is facing such grave problems.<br /><br />Perversely, for some UCU members, the picture I have painted gets perceived from their perspective as a debate forum which seems to offer a kind of diverting & entertaining sport. One recent poster explained how he was returning to the debate as a "nice break" from marking - "to see how the debate was going"!!<br /><br />For the rest of us, however, as <a href="http://www.engageonline.org.uk/blog/article.php?id=1332">David Hirsh</a> has put it, it's "puerile, toxic, boring, repetitive and dangerous." And damaging and distracting and debilitating... etc ETC <span style="font-size:130%;">ETC</span><br /><br />My last post, on having <em><a href="http://boycotted-uk-academic.blogspot.com/2007/11/room-of-ones-own.html">A Room of One's Own</a></em>, was motivated by witnessing the <a href="http://hurryupharry.bloghouse.net/archives/2007/11/25/more_hosting_of_fascists.php">latest</a> <a href="http://www.workersliberty.org/node/9598">fight</a> on the List, yet another in a long and shameful line, and particularly the efforts of one fine academic on there who was speaking for so many of us in taking on the hate-filled messages being dumped on there by our boycotting 'colleagues.' Quite apart from the toll such activity must take, both psychologically and in terms of an academic's ability to produce excellent scholarship (which is the phenomenon Woolf was describing in a different context), I wondered how this academic could manage to absorb such hate, contain it, and then proceed to reply with cool logic & reason when, to me, the only response which seems fitting is a loud<br /><br /><span style="color:#ff0000;">F OFF!!!!</span><br /><br />Readers, you'll have realized by now that I'm not of a disposition & nature to have what it takes to respond in this vein. Instead, I just watch on in silence, paralyzed, like a rabbit trapped in the glare of headlights in the middle of a motorway.<br /><br />Worse, instead of just closing down the window through which all this filth enters my life - to get on with that life, as best I can in the circumstances - I squander most of my productive time, detained in thinking how and by what means I might acquire the constitution to respond to this sort of venom. It seems to be beyond me - I am not, as an academic, used to dealing with argument waged in these uncivil and pugnacious terms; and I don't seem to have developed the skills required. All I can do is look on, in horror, at the messages being submitted by the boycotters - horror, I tell you; and in admiration, at the messages posted by those few valiant academics on there who manage, somehow, and at great cost, to take these disgraceful boycotters on.<br /><br />I am amongst those silent on-lookers mentioned by Eve Garrard in an excellent <a href="http://normblog.typepad.com/normblog/2007/10/la-peste-by-eve.html">blog post</a> which makes me feel so ashamed about my (non)response to all this. Her post describes just one of a countless multitude of offensive, shameful postings and observes that<br /><br /><span style="color:#ff6666;">the most striking feature of the remark was not that it was made by a pro-boycotter, nor that it reeks of classic anti-Semitic thinking about the power of Jews... It wasn't even that none of the pro-boycotters disowned this remark or spoke out against its being made, though that was indeed the case. No, the most striking aspect of the whole event was that not one single person, from all of those relatively unengaged UCU activists who read the remark, found anything worth objecting to in it. None of them protested about it. Such things have indeed become normalized, unexceptionable, unworthy of remark - and this in an academic sub-culture which prides itself, as the UCU vociferously does, on its anti-racist commitment.<br /></span><br /><span style="color:#ff6666;">There is the shadow of a dying rat in the corner of the room, and people don't remark on it. It's not polite - in fact it's offensive, insulting - to mention the matter.</span><br /><br />I wonder if Eve has underestimated a sub-category of silent UCU member on the List, one in which I count myself: those who are unable to object & fight back; those for whom the forum is so brutal & belligerent that they are cowered & shocked into silence but whose silence should not be taken to signify acceptance; quite, quite the contrary!<br /><br />As I've said, the List is pretty much a single-issue platform, dominated and paralyzed by the boycott movement, to the detriment of its furtherance of core union aims. From time to time, however, the occasional message does get posted on there which addresses more standard union business (without eliciting great interest, I might add, everyone apparently too spent & disgusted by the 'solidarity work'). One such: bullying at work.<br /><br />The <a href="http://www.andreaadamstrust.org/">definition</a> given by the Andrea Adams Trust - which recently coordinated a <strong>Ban Bullying at Work Day,</strong> welcomed by <a href="http://www.ucu.org.uk/index.cfm?articleid=2949">UCU</a> and trailed on the activist list - describes perfectly the bullying which passes for international solidarity work on the Activist List, as well as the likely effects this bullying has on those of us who have the misfortune to have to be subjected to it, just for being part of our union:<br /><br /><span style="color:#ff6666;"><strong>WHAT IS WORKPLACE BULLYING?</strong></span><br /><span style="color:#ff6666;"><br />When we talk about bullying at work we are referring to an <strong>abuse of power or position</strong>. It is <strong>offensive discrimination through persistant [sic], vindictive, cruel or humiliating attempts to undermine, criticise, condemn, and to hurt or humiliate an individual or group</strong> of employees.<br /><br />It can make employees <strong>lives a misery,</strong> <strong>affect</strong> their <strong>performance and damage</strong> their <strong>careers</strong>. It can also have a serious impact on organisations: indeed, statistics show that each year as many as 18.9 million working days are lost to bullying and up to a half of all <strong>stress-related illnesses are a direct result of bullying</strong>.</span><br /><br />I couldn't help but notice the contradiction of our union showing concern for this issue at a time when bullying was being conducted on the List itself, courtesy of the boycotters (including those on my campus, a fact which serves to augment the pervasiveness of their bullying for I can't even conceptually contain them in that virtual madness which is the UCU Activist List!).<br /><br />It always seemed odd to me that UCU should stand so staunchly against campus bullying, UCU HQ having apparently taken an active role in the initiative, on the one hand, and yet be the institutional facilitator of precisely that, through the bullying boycott, on the other. This includes the List moderators working at HQ who allow all sorts of antisemitic claims, and indeed in effect an antisemitic campaign to be waged, on the List itself. Who is UCU to preach when they don't practise?!<br /><br />It is the bullying ways of the boycotters which serve to explain the group of silent UCU members of which I'm part: the horrified & terrorized on-looker, watching the List muzzled & mute. It's just this kind of bullying which has rendered me silent & voiceless in the bigot's playground. That is what bullying does.<br /></span><br />~~~~~<br /><br /><span style="color:#ff0000;">**</span> there's a fake <strong>BBA poster</strong> who occasionally <a href="http://hurryupharry.bloghouse.net/archives/2007/10/08/university_college_union_activists_list_what_was_said.php">posts</a> on the HP site - fake, in the sense that it's not me (that is not BBA's e-mail, for starters!) but someone who has performed the necessary task of exposing, in this name, what passes for international solidarity work in our Stalinist union! There's another going by the name of UCU Whistleblower, a moniker which is equally apt. The <strong>BBA blog </strong>is meant to be a resource for other academics facing similar conditions to those I am experiencing and so it is only fitting that others should adopt the BBA moniker (as I've noted in another <a href="http://boycotted-uk-academic.blogspot.com/2007/10/round-2-boycotters-v-lord-lester.html#c6843307806283954828">thread</a>, this is fair enough): let it be one adopted by those for whom it captures the condition of being a <strong>Boycotted British Academic</strong>. This blog forum began as a way of finding a voice and I hope this process of articulating that voice on this blog can help all of us!Boycotted British Academichttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05336249818541398673noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8155767247110659836.post-32285091319133760312007-11-27T23:06:00.000+00:002007-11-28T09:10:21.970+00:00A Room of One's Own in Boycotting Britannia?I will explain in <a href="http://etext.library.adelaide.edu.au/w/woolf/virginia/w91r/">Virginia Woolf's words</a>, borrowed from her collection of essays whose title I have adopted for this post - her "enquiry into what state of mind is most propitious for creative work"- as she says, for this, one needs:<br /><br /><span style="color:#ff6666;">a room of one's own, a quiet room, a sound–proof room</span><br /><br />Yet here on my campus, in the room in which I'm meant to write, silence constantly eludes, run over with sounds come from all the four corners:<br /><br /><span style="font-size:100%;"><em>Boycott! Protocols Lobby! Apartheid! Neo-colonialist! Neo-imperialist!</em></span><br /><br />... incessantly prefaced by the word 'Jewish' - of course - whether the individual or the nation...<br /><br />The noise never ceases; it streams out, screams out, from all directions. Always, its always LOUD. It's doggedly, destructively, distracting & debilitating in the way described by Woolf from whose narrative, however different her subject, I find myself drawing so many parallels as I read the text anew, from the perspective of the <strong>Boycotted British Academic</strong> in one room on one campus, trying & failing to write creatively...<br /><br />Again, borrowing her words - how can I, when:<br /><br /><span style="color:#ff6666;">My mind is strained and my vitality lowered by the need of opposing this, of disproving that</span><br /><br />No room of my own, not here at my university.Boycotted British Academichttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05336249818541398673noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8155767247110659836.post-50345514502644133892007-11-22T19:11:00.000+00:002007-12-17T19:52:49.663+00:00"Include me out"This is how James Russell ends an <a href="http://www.columbia.edu/cu/current/articles/fall2007/ideology-over-integrity-in-academe.html">article</a> whose closing paragraph I felt spoke for me in my condition of being a <strong>Boycotted British Academic</strong> - he describes walking by campus ivy covering over & masking collegial rot putrefying on the inside - which I read as if he were relating many a trajectory I've had to trace, along the principal artery on campus, literally tripping over Israel-demonizing leaflets & dodging the outspoken boycotters, just for the sake of reaching my office. Is it any wonder that I dread going in to work?!<br /><br />The author, of course, has the good fortune to be in the position of the outsider looking in; whereas I am still on the inside, in the boycotted way I am trying to catalogue through this blog, trapped in a paralyzing parallel impulse which is captured by Russell's phrase: to be, on the one hand, <strong>out</strong> - to quit the rot with which I (just like Russell) want no association; and, on the other, a (misguided?) hope that if I stay in, if I continue to be <strong>included</strong>, I might have some chance to contribute to the important & necessary challenge of clearing up that rot. Russell's phrase captures the impossible oppositionality of living in this state of being a <strong>Boycotted British Academic</strong>: I am both included & excluded; I am both in & out. Formally, as a staff member at my university I am obviously included; yet substantively & experientially, in terms of how I feel through the filter of the <a href="http://boycotted-uk-academic.blogspot.com/search/label/Boycotting%20Effect">boycotting effect</a>, I am just as clearly excluded.<br /><br />[Hat tip: <a href="http://www.engageonline.org.uk/blog/article.php?id=1524">Engage</a>]Boycotted British Academichttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05336249818541398673noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8155767247110659836.post-60771475131048749692007-11-21T17:42:00.001+00:002007-11-21T20:38:17.366+00:00"Excuse me, but you sound just like the far right"The sound in question was that made by the boycotters over <a href="http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/926327.html">here</a> in Boycotting Britannia over the week-end...Boycotted British Academichttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05336249818541398673noreply@blogger.com0