BOYCOTTED BRITISH ACADEMIC

BBA's "Tourette's"

2009-03-22T19:11:00.046Z

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 swamp, 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.

It's a predicament in which this blog has oft found me, for instance, at this point, when I explained how the malaise renders me one pretty damn hopeless player in the game currently prime-entertainment over at the Bigot's Playground. 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.

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.

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...

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.

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.

BBA has come in for reprimand on this account - quite reasonably, I might add...

With this in mind, I was to be found the other day watching this 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 they do it - Clinton, Nixon, Baker etc. (see here from 2:08 for about 40secs, excerpting some of the segments which caused BBA to make this observation at the time).

Hey, what the F is that about?!

Backfiring Boycott - Deadline for Submissions!!

2009-02-22T20:04:00.050Z

As this blog has previously noted, 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.

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 swamp - to trawl through links to the various funding schemes presently inviting applications from academics. The last instalment includes a link to the Britain-Israel Research and Academic Exchange Partnership, 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.

Unfortunately, time is short, in case any eligible readers of this blog might be interested in applying - the deadline is: 2nd March 22:00 GMT. The details are here.

Just think, in addition to the chance of doing research with leading academics based in Israel,** such an application could well have the added bonus of driving the boycotters just that little bit more bonkers!
_______________________

** and, of course, the boycott - and, more particularly, much of the anti-boycott riposte it has so vexatiously necessitated (e.g.) - 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!)

"Envy and Resentment"

2008-09-22T14:58:00.023+01:00

Belatedly, I put my hand on a rather mangled hard-copy of the week-end before last's Jerusalem Post and saw this, 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 (Theoretical Inquiries in Law) 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.

Boycott that, you noodles!

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 BDS 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...

Anyway, the title came to me just now, as I was reading The Dude on BHL. At least that, for the task of articulation remains apparently too depressing for BBA in these "dark times" 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 swamp, such that BHL via The Dude or whatever will have to do in the circumstances...

Harry's Place and the Bullies of UCU

2008-08-26T15:19:00.049+01:00

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 fascist 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 swamp, and then to continue, often flailing helplessly as now...).

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 vile bile which passes for solidarity within our union, silenced (e.g.) 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.

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, Harry's Place 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 Bigot's Playground).

More details to follow, when I know them, and no doubt on Harry's Place, 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: Modernity, with some background (and an update), which put me onto this link, amusingly named after the bully in question, and presently functioning as an ersatz Harry's Place while the real site is temporarily down.

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 Harry's Place 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 Harry's Place 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, beyond words, 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.

Update - late the following day...
Phew!

Parade as Charade

2008-06-17T17:36:00.042+01:00

When it comes to marching, you can count on UCU. 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.

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?

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 (e.g.).

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.

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 hydra post) and to hinder acts of solidarity (translation: the sort of pathetic gestures the BDS 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 here, which uses the example of art to represent a phenomenon which I've discovered the boycotters to display in phenomenal quantities)).

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.

Madness and UCU

2008-05-29T10:30:00.011+01:00

In my last post I alluded to the madness with which I am having to contend, working here as BBA.

No sooner published, what did I encounter? Yet more madness: UCU claiming that a boycott is not a boycott. No, it's solidarity. No, really.

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 boycott is not a boycott. And that the sort of hate-fest on display in the hydra comments is debate. The swamp is overtaken with absurdity, on top of every thing else.

Someone, please, tell me this is not the profession I've chosen...

Declare Yourself an Israeli Academic!

2008-05-29T07:39:00.016+01:00

Please sign the petition proposed by SPME:

"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. "

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...

~~~~~~~

The story of this blog, the story of BBA, a beginning:

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.

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.

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.

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)

Another UCU Congress... Another Racist Motion

2008-05-28T21:00:00.007+01:00

This just in, about what emerged this time out of the swamp of swamps:

The University and College Union (UCU) has today passed a motion that would allow for the reintroduction of a boycott of Israeli academia.

At its annual congress in Manchester, the motion was passed without debate and by a show of hands.

I despair...

I've not forgotten my pledge of the other day but today is not a day for writing. Just despair...

Beyond Words: Post Hydra

2008-05-26T23:40:00.059+01:00

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...

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!

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.

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...

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 stalker-bullying 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.

~~~~~~~

This clue can be found in some comments which have been left to my last 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!

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 Bigot's Playground. 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!).

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...

~~~~~~~

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.

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...

It was Zkharya who first got me worrying about applying the myth to this context, in a comment over at Engage (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...

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.

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...

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...

~~~~~~~

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:

the Augean Stables (Herakles' 5th Labour) - the anti-boycotters need to divert the rivers of anti-racism and commonsense to wash away the filth

Which made me think of this 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!).

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 Walt & Mearsh show 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.

What, this is solidarity?!

~~~~~~~

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...

Let's just hope this spirit & pledge survive our imminent UCU Congress and that this swamp of swamps doesn't cause me to retreat into silence anew...

The Hydra of British Academia

2008-03-29T23:45:00.033Z

Here in Boycotting Britannia, a monster lurks in the swamps, 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 UCU 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 Metamorphoses:

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! [9. 69 ff (trans. Melville)]

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 ballot of UCU members which the boycotters so fear and contrive to avoid); 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 godfather of our anti-discrimination and human rights laws. If none of this could stop this beast's destructive sweep, what will it take?

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, the beast returns and UCU is yet again pushing a racist and illegal proposal. (For previous sightings of this monster and the story of the battle against it, see here.)

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 Bigot's Playground (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.

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?

If only this were just the stuff of myths...

photo credit (Narcisse Berchere after Gustave Moreau)

Mourning a Friend: Anthony Minghella

2008-03-18T18:58:00.013Z

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 menschlichkeit 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.

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 special season devoted to showcasing Israeli movies. The year before, he'd visited the prestigious Jerusalem Film Festival as guest of honour. The festival's director, Lia van Leer, recalls that he

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!" [source]

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.’ [source]

A life in pictures (podcast of what was probably his last lecture).

The Story of the Backfiring Boycott

2008-03-08T01:25:00.032Z

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.

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 seems that some good was being brought about as a result of this farcical fiasco, after all:

As a result of the UCU boycott vote in May, requests from UK academics to work with Israeli academics have dramatically increased.
[hat tip: Solomonia]

This was obviously on the cards, given events previously observed in this blog (in the update to this post; see also Engage'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 press reported some damage-limitation on the part of British academia. Remember how, in

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

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.

BDS (Disambiguation)

2008-03-02T02:02:00.044Z

I just caught myself perfecting my last post - 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.

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 sick associations:** 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!

The Google search brought more mirth for it turns out that BDS actually stands for quite a few things, in addition to Boycott, Divestment & Sanctions (against Israel, of course, silently included in the acronym, without need even to specify a country beginning with the letter "I" - since this type of thinking has become so commonplace that one can now just automatically assume Israel is the target of such actions - duh!). Here you'll find all the possibilities for BDS.

This is what amused me:

Bush Derangement Syndrome (BDS) 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.

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"

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 W&M 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 Boycott Derangement Syndrome, for that just about gets to the essence of this boycott movement!

~~~~

** 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.

"Dying for a Degree" at a College threatened by the Boycott

2008-02-28T23:11:00.046Z

When the academic boycotters rationalize their racist campaign on the basis that it's necessary to protest against interference with the right to education (e.g.), 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 latest barrage, 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.

Meanwhile, today, a student at the College explains 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.

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 BDS 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 "Livingstone formulation" reigns supreme, do I still have the naivety ask?!

In the words of the Sapir student, Omri Keinan, describing the conditions in which he is trying to acquire his college degree:

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 less than 10 seconds to seek cover in the face of incoming rockets.

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.

Sacrificing our life

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.

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,** 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.

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?

~~~~

** 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. [source]

Somebody Noticed!

2008-02-20T15:05:00.040Z

Miracle of miracles.

Today, at Prime Minister's Questions, Louise Ellman MP asked the PM what steps the government would be taking in view of the recent release of the Community Security Trust's Antisemitic Incidents Report 2007. 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 here, depending on your software - scroll to 25:35 for the question on CST).

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 (e.g.), 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!).

Here are some extracts from the report which pertain to incidents relating to our campuses:

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.

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.

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.

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.

Six on-campus incidents took place in the direct context of political campaigning.

Examples of antisemitic incidents that took place on campus in 2007 include:

Swastikas and other antisemitic graffiti were scratched into the door of a Jewish student’s room in a hall of residence
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.

....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).

The Engage posting on the CST report tries to give a positive gloss in closing:

Above all, we must maintain perspective. Jewish life in Britain is overwhelmingly positive, and it is this that should define us, rather than antisemitism.

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.

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.

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...

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!).

Or am I loosing perspective? (BBA asks rhetorically)

I'm Back!

2008-02-20T14:57:00.026Z

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.

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...

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 Stepford Wives 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!).

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...

The comments are for the rubbish, of course, as the wonderful Anthony Julius reminded us recently (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): rubbish is rubbish, but the history of rubbish is scholarship. So, in the interest of any such scholarship, the comments will remain for posterity.

And, to let y'all know... I'm back! (I hope?!)

The Bank(rupt)sy of 'Solidarity'

2007-12-23T19:45:00.009Z

When I first heard, a couple of weeks ago, that the British graffiti artist Banksy 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!

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.

We know why Banksy was likely to choose a wall in Bethlehem over, say, Baghdad: 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 CiF). 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 "publicly condemned what is being done" 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.

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.

This is one of the offending pictures Banksy painted on the wall:

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 wall looks today:

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 do something but they don't really want to get involved. They don't want to engage. 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 "infantilizing and dehumanizing representation of Palestinians" - 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!

Update on the Bigot's Playground

2007-12-20T22:57:00.001Z

I checked the UCU List again at some point after the last 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.

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.

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!

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 perennial questions about my membership in UCU and I've been on the verge of resigning. Nothing out of the ordinary there then!

Today, however, I was catching up over at Harry's Place and the name of one of the List's boycotters-extraordinaire 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?

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.

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 last post, when he says:

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

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.

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!

Of Boycotts & Blaming

2007-12-18T19:15:00.000Z

Engage 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.

It's the oft-repeated claim that the anti-boycott campaign gives the

implication that Israel’s Jewish identity should protect it from criticism

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?

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 previously 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.

Good, at least, that even Graun's CiF didn't see fit to publish this (he's been on there 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.

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:

The Serenity Prayer for Muslims…

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.

Serenity to accept the things we cannot change…

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.

Power to change the things we can…

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?

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.

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.

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.

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? If Islam means peace’ then we should make it, rather than waiting for someone else to first take blame.

Wisdom to know the difference…

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 prolongs the bloodshed and sentences Palestinians in particular to even more violence, indignity and death.

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 more outspoken reformist Muslims in Arab countries than there are in the West, because they are the ones paying the price for this violence.

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.

Amen…

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.

Written by Amina Khan, Boston via Irshad Manji

First Instincts

2007-12-17T18:04:00.001Z

The crucial place of Israeli academia in the advancement of science has been recognized in the latest compilation of Scientific American's list 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?

The plot thickens. When I read 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:

Ben-Jacob told The Jerusalem Post 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 Nature along with recommendations from three Nobel Prize laureates, it was rejected on the grounds of "not being of general interest"

Do I need to add that Nature is based here in Boycotting Britannia?!

UPDATE
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 BBA Forumniks which suggest the people over at Nature are not always very clear on the wrongs of boycotting Israeli academics, having lent the journal's pages 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 piece against the boycott which was particularly important & compelling.

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.

UCU Activist List (aka the "Bigot's Playground")

2007-12-02T20:21:00.000Z

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).

Not judging by the UCU activist list - aka - the bigot's playground: we are already familiar with the sort of bigotry which comes courtesy of this List, since it's made its appearance on here before (the link is to that post's update and to the anon. comments it attracted, some of which have also appeared on Harry's Place).** Yes, that toxic forum which UCU offers, and here's the official line, to encourage its members to become more active 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.

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:

Let the mad people rant on... The boycott just will not go away! Why should it ...
(note the absence of a question mark!)

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:

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?

I am prevented from talking in too much detail about the List as it operates according to the most Stalinist of structures & rules, resulting in the eventual exclusion 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 silenced in this way. [the link is to David Hirsh's comment on that thread]

Think of the ugliness which appears on an I/P thread on any day of any year on CiF. Think boycotting academics with apparently WAY too much time on their hands. And you've roughly got the picture!

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.

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"!!

For the rest of us, however, as David Hirsh has put it, it's "puerile, toxic, boring, repetitive and dangerous." And damaging and distracting and debilitating... etc ETC ETC

My last post, on having A Room of One's Own, was motivated by witnessing the latest fight 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

F OFF!!!!

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.

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.

I am amongst those silent on-lookers mentioned by Eve Garrard in an excellent blog post 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

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.

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.

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!

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.

The definition given by the Andrea Adams Trust - which recently coordinated a Ban Bullying at Work Day, welcomed by UCU 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:

WHAT IS WORKPLACE BULLYING?

When we talk about bullying at work we are referring to an abuse of power or position. It is offensive discrimination through persistant [sic], vindictive, cruel or humiliating attempts to undermine, criticise, condemn, and to hurt or humiliate an individual or group of employees.

It can make employees lives a misery, affect their performance and damage their careers. 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 stress-related illnesses are a direct result of bullying.

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!).

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?!

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.

~~~~~

** there's a fake BBA poster who occasionally posts 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 BBA blog 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 thread, this is fair enough): let it be one adopted by those for whom it captures the condition of being a Boycotted British Academic. 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!

A Room of One's Own in Boycotting Britannia?

2007-11-27T23:06:00.000Z

I will explain in Virginia Woolf's words, 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:

a room of one's own, a quiet room, a sound–proof room

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:

Boycott! Protocols Lobby! Apartheid! Neo-colonialist! Neo-imperialist!

... incessantly prefaced by the word 'Jewish' - of course - whether the individual or the nation...

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 Boycotted British Academic in one room on one campus, trying & failing to write creatively...

Again, borrowing her words - how can I, when:

My mind is strained and my vitality lowered by the need of opposing this, of disproving that

No room of my own, not here at my university.

"Include me out"

2007-11-22T19:11:00.000Z

This is how James Russell ends an article whose closing paragraph I felt spoke for me in my condition of being a Boycotted British Academic - 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?!

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, out - 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 included, 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 Boycotted British Academic: 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 boycotting effect, I am just as clearly excluded.

[Hat tip: Engage]

"Excuse me, but you sound just like the far right"

2007-11-21T17:42:00.001Z

The sound in question was that made by the boycotters over here in Boycotting Britannia over the week-end...

Football Morality

2007-11-19T16:34:00.000Z

After the match, the news trailed a clip of a bellowing football commentator, struggling to make himself heard above the din celebrating the last-minute winning goal scored by the footballer now nicknamed - get this - the Golan Heights (for the heights achieved by Omer Golan in scoring that goal)! The commentator repeats, exuberantly & incredulously:

Israel has done England “a favour to end all favours”

Afterwards, during a radio phone-in about the game, a grateful caller (who stressed he was neither Israeli nor Jewish) tried to say something about how he hoped that we would now stop demonizing and vilifying Israel; but the Boycott Boosting Corp came into its own & he was cut off in mid-call by the show's host, on the basis that politics shouldn't be brought into this.

I wonder, though - remembering what Camus once quipped about how the best lessons of morality and the duty of man are learned through football. Here in Boycotting Britannia, we have shown ourselves to be in desperate need of some lessons in duty & morality, obviously, what with our unions having so spectacularly fallen foul of protections against discrimination & racism.

I glanced through some of the talk-backs in The Sun on the game - quite a discovery, this is indeed a first! In addition to finding with some amusement how one thread seems to have been taken over by Hebrew-speakers, I was pleased to note how one poster (Elvis) seems to have been transformed by the experience: before the game, he'd gone for a Protocols take on the situation (or should that now be W&M?!), imagining the match was going to be fixed by Jewish money, with some footie-mad Russian, with cash to spare, pulling the strings to rig England's chances & boost those of Russia. After the game, the same Elvis was all sweetness and light, in a clipped sort of way, in thanks to Israel. (Graun - of course! - made much the same Jewish conspiracy insinuation in one of its pre-match sports blogs... Seriously!)

Camus was apparently referring to:

an ethic of sticking up for your friends, of valuing courage and fair-play

believing that people

try to confuse us with convoluted moral systems to suit their own agendas

when we

may do better to look to the simple morality of the football field than to politicians and philosophers

... and especially, bien sure, boycotting academics!

Let's hope the qualities of friendship, courage & fair-play demonstrated this week-end retakes the field and that the simple morality of football will replace the shameful & petty posturing of the boycotting academics still trying to ruin our union and our academy to suit their own agendas.

One of the lovely BBA Forumniks does well to remind us that the academic boycott is a zombie, apparently possibly about to rear its ugly ahead again. And there's still the silent boycott which, no doubt, informally or unofficially precedes & succeeds this whole disgraceful debacle over UCU Motion 30. Let's hope we'll learn the lessons of morality & duty suggested by the football mania of this week-end and that the favour Israel did for England will be one to end all boycotts!

Passing the Tebbit Test: Come on Israel!

2007-11-16T23:58:00.000Z

Over here in Boycott Land, the contradiction or irony of the moment is that presently every one seems to be rooting for Israel. Well, that's one way to drive the boycotters bonkers - I should say, even more bonkers!

They must be incensed at how our air-waves are dominated by the cry: Come on Israel! The only talk is of Israel being victorious and winning the fight. At every bulletin, Israel is being cheered on; at half-hourly intervals, we hear of fingers being crossed for Israel. The Hatikvah has been blaring out from the radio. The tabloid press are handing out free Israel flags and giving tips on how to be a true & authentic Israel supporter... All together now, Yallah Israel!

The reason: England is looking unlikely to qualify for Euro 2008 unless, and here's the twist, Israel wins its upcoming qualification round against Russia (even a draw will keep alive England's chances). Israel has already been eliminated from the competition and can no longer qualify, whatever the outcome of the match against Russia (thanks in no small measure to - er - England, which trounced the Israel team 3:0 when they played at Wembley this summer, in midst boycotting madness). Such are the stakes that the football equivalent of the barmy army are even reported to have travelled out to Israel again to support 'their' team against Russia, having so much enjoyed the visit for England's away qualification game against Israel earlier in the year (in which the teams drew a love game)!

UPDATE

Israel did England a massive favour:

!!! Israel: 2 -- Russia: 1 !!!

A favour in return for ... all those boycotts, threatened and on-going (silently & otherwise)???

The Aftermath of the Whirl

2007-11-10T19:03:00.000Z

The great comments to my Whirl post moved me to act as witness to the Walt & Mearsh Show when I'd probably otherwise have stayed away, continuing to tread that well-worn path of least resistance, of greatest avoidance, minded to spare myself the futile upset. How very Boycotted British Academic!

Having been detained most of the summer preparing to fight this bonkers boycott, by tracing its gory genealogy, I felt confident that I'd seen it all before and that nothing new could be gained or witnessed.** I knew how it was going to be: depressing, dispiriting and likely severely to exacerbate this already pervasive boycotting effect. And I knew it would be futile because I'd feel voiceless & powerless. And so it was.

But for your sake or thanks to you - BBA Forumniks - I compromised! I still bottled it, big time, for I stayed well clear of my own campus at the appointed hour. Nothing new there then!

I made do with reports from people who did show and, figuring it would be less threatening and unbearable, I took in the W&M show playing on another campus. Someone I encountered in the whirl, who seems to have shown up at several gigs, assured me that there was nothing to distinguish the show I went to from the one I avoided.

I'm glad I bottled it! I don't need to witness campus colleagues revealing themselves, as inevitably as some would, to be in a truly frightening state of moral limbo, blinkered and blind to the obvious bigotry being peddled liberally in Boycotting Britannia. I just couldn't hack witnessing that and feel I've seen more than enough already what with this whole UCU boycott experience - I'd prefer to keep alive the hope/fantasy, faltering as it often is, that their presence isn't too heavy on campus than to risk knowing that indeed they are all over the place. My situation is already virtually untenable as things stand!

I even managed to miss the first of my chosen alternative W&M gigs - my conscious self having recorded the wrong time while my subconscious seems to have been continuing to resist your challenge & counsel! However, with a good deal of luck and quite some ordeal, I managed to catch up and I witnessed one of their campus gigs in the end... What a palaver!

In fact, such was my dedication to this witnessing project, I underwent the ordeal of hearing the exact same preposterous show TWICE. Not out of masochism but compensation: I was so upset by the nature of the debate on campus that I wanted to see the show in what I hoped would be a setting which would compensate & offset the dreadful terms of debate dictated by these 'brave' scholars: outside the university, with an audience of experts. The downside was that this was a more intimate and cloistered setting (in contrast to the campus gig, which was packed, standing room only and not much of that), which brought W&M just that bit too close for comfort! In the event, nothing much was gained: the Q&A was kept rigorously short, a taxi ready & waiting conveniently to curtail the sort of scrutiny and challenge which such a thesis requires if it's to be debated at all. With the show having started late to begin with, it was all over before it had started and thus, W&M wriggled away from anything approximating debate.

I understand something similar occurred at another of their expert gigs (a reduced time having been trailed in advance on the event's advert), with people feeling they didn't get the chance for a proper challenge. In contrast, one can note that at the campus gigs - which could be expected to offer the most sympathetic audience, with a majority of impressionable students well primed for the show, and experts or other persons of stature comparable to the authors more likely to be in the minority - the Q&A part went on for as long as one hour & 10 minutes!

Both the gigs I witnessed closed with the chair, by all appearances all buddy-buddy with W&M, stressing the importance that this debate was actually held, the campus chair emphasizing how crucial it was that it should be conducted in a "civilized and fair-minded fashion" - both of them concluding with completely unfounded self-congratulation as to the debate's all-round success, even highlighting how the event showed the hosting institution in good light. I found myself asking whether I'd attended the same debate for all I heard was a controversial and, in the view of many, an abhorrent, unscholarly & indefensible thesis, with major methodological & other problems, being advanced without the opportunity for its problematic claims to be debated properly.

On campus, the questions were mostly supportive of the authors and they were rewarded with much obsequiousness and fawning. In one case, it was so extreme & exaggerated that the chair joked that W&M's publisher must be in audience. (Actually, the person in question is known to us as an outspoken boycotter - quelle surprise!) I got the sense that many people had stayed away, just as I would have done. And there was so much competition & clamouring to reap the kudos of showing support that perhaps those who wanted to pose challenging questions & actually engage with the substance of the argument (albeit only to demonstrate how there isn't any!) didn't get their chance .

The authors were applauded in the most absurd places, and got a loud 15 second impromptu applause at the campus gig at the end of their presentation, even before the Q&A, as if people just couldn't wait; being crowned, at the end, with a sustained round of applause. The experts gig was more measured and I didn't perceive the end (and only) clapping to have been too enthusiastic (although I was making a point of not clapping myself so I might have been distracted, given the intimate setting, by this pathetic enactment of the only act of resistance I felt was still open to me!).

While a few brave sorts did manage, against all odds, to pose some challenging questions, W&M have become adept by now at appearing to deflect the criticism without really addressing the challenge. Such a debate needs riposte and counter-argument, for the challenger to have the chance to respond to W&M's disgraceful evasions. This would have been provided had the debate taken place in a fairer context. But not in Boycotting Britannia. Instead, people were left to shout, the microphone having been quickly whisked away, only to elicit hissing from the crowd for the impertinence of seeking to debate.

At the expert's talk, one questioner hinted at the real cowardice of these 'brave' authors, asking them whether they'd finally acceded to Professor Alan Dershowitz's invitation to debate. The answer is dumbfounding: we don't debate anyone who wants to discuss antisemitism! So much for taking extra special care, eh? They won't even discuss it!

And yet: one questioner at the campus gig observed how someone had approached him earlier, upon entering the lecture theatre, to ask whether this was where the talk about the Jewish Lobby was taking place. Other questioners were fuming about various things to do with Jews, whether it was about their holding public office (what a cheek, how dare they?!) or about invitations being offered by communal organizations to the occasional member of the government to eat/talk at their annual dinner (who would have imagined such a thing?!). Oh, how quickly and transparently did W&M's much vaunted yet slippery caveats get lost in the 'debate'!

Throughout, I couldn't quite shake off my Dr Watson analogy of the other day and kept asking myself why the two cases were being treated so radically differently. Forget about the freedom and its limits. That's irrelevant to the problem here, such are the depths to which this problem seems to have descended in the present case. It's the application of the freedom, whatever its limits may be, to this case which is itself racist & discriminatory, revealing just how prepped we already seem to have been for this show.

The whole experience left me feeling, as I say, depressed and worried. Foolishly, I checked CiF only to be told there's nothing to worry about - what's the fuss about? Blogging and CiFing... As you can see, I'm making my usual progress with those damned deadlines!

This morning, I awoke to the extended news (Today programme) whose main headlining story entailed discussion of:

Nazi Germany in the 1930s as an example of how people's minds could be poisoned against a community.

These were the words filtering through to me as I emerged from slumber:

What you had in the 1930s was all sorts of popular fictions were spread about the Jewish community that they were responsible for all ills that were occurring. They were made into folk-devils.

We mustn't demonise.

In my state of semi-consciousness, I must have registered the contemporary relevance being drawn over our air-waves from this history and - suspended between this reality I'm experiencing and what passes for fair campus & intellectual debate; between sleep and waking - I managed somehow to incorporate the story into the whole whirl of the W&M Show. Finally, I mistakenly registered, people are coming to understand and see what all the fuss is about!

But that was in my dreams and then I woke up.

~~~~~~

** I don't recommend the link provided but if you're really curious, here's more to witness! It's a long debate in the days when W&M (actually, M in this instance) were still courageous enough to have this debate as a debate, namely on a podium with experts, as defended in my previous post, with others able to contribute the element which has been so sorely missing in the Walt & Mearsh Show which has just ended here. Even in such (now unimaginable) debate settings, it is nauseating to note how the audience still managed to boo & hiss & applaud in the most inappropriate places, apparently impervious to compelling, well-reasoned argument furnished by W&M's competent debaters, preferring to hear whatever message they wanted to hear, however much it had just been thoroughly discredited for all to hear. And this was NYC. I knew it would be worse here. And it was.

Thanks to everyone who shared views on the W&M show with me (especially GG)

In the Whirl of the Walt & Mearsh Show: Some Dilemmas

2007-11-06T13:15:00.000Z

Over two weeks have passed since my last post. This just won't do. Not daily, not weekly; nor even bi-weekly! I would have let you know had I known myself - there's no simple explanation.

I've pinned up a big note behind my computer screen, in bold red marker pen, which reads:

Don't blog. Forget the boycott, CiF etc. WORK!!

That's the explanation: I've been desperately trying to mitigate the damage of this summer of boycotting belligerence, scrambling to meet, in the final hour, some pressing publication deadlines which were forced until now to slip behind the boycott in priority. As usual, I imagined I'd meet them more easily and in a shorter time-span than has proven to be the case. I thought it'd be but a brief blogging interlude...

Also, it was obviously an error to think I could have the luxury of being able to ignore all this - the boycott always stood as symbol for something much larger and that something is ever enlarging and the larger it gets, the more distracting it becomes and the more impossible it is to concentrate on my academic writing.

The latest distraction comes by way of the Walt & Mearsheimer show coming to a campus soon near ... ME! (that should be flashing neon, in an academic sense of course!). Coming to my campus, to be precise. The very campus from which I've grown to feel boycotted, the hosting of W&M being just another sign of my hostile & exclusionary working environment.

[apologies for the photo & the scatological expressions which ensue, this is upsetting and the photo cheered me up when I found it, as does the scatology it has inspired. In my defence, please know that you find me a pauper for want of other ways of dealing with this. A feature which makes this whole period we're living through all the more frightening for, at each juncture of speech, my right is withdrawn, whether by way of being branded a lobbyist apologist or dismissed as paranoid or otherwise psychologically-traumatized. And in the end, all I'm left with is sick humour. Muzzlewatch my you know what!]

People, it's really hitting the fan around here, getting flung around far & wide up and down our campuses, and coming no doubt to a campus near you, for these guys are putting themselves about, turning up here & there: two central London campuses, an Oxford college, and on and on. I have too many connections with those I've highlighted than I am comfortable with, both as a staff member & alum. And, to top it all, W&M are even lecturing Whitehall. So much for coursing one's way through the rivulets of power!

The authors have insisted that they stand uncontested on the podium, alone & free to state their incendiary thesis without the possibility of being challenged by an authority able to do so - on a panel with experts in their field, able to demolish their thesis as anyone expert in the field would. Walt justified this condition to the New York Times: "when you’re promoting a book, you want to present your ideas without appearing with someone who is trying to discredit you." Good one!

Here's a little thought-experiment: imagine Dr James Watson** had been accorded freedoms of speech comparable to those granted by all and sundry to W&M, in this case, to promulgate an abhorrent thesis making connections between race, genes & intelligence. In fact, Watson was prevented from speaking because of the outrage his thesis provoked but just imagine, for the sake of this analogy, that the freedom of speech which gets W&M invited to all these supposedly prestigious universities were applied equally to Dr Watson. Do you think for one minute that he'd have been given the right to speak, uncontested, without at least someone of like stature & authority on the podium alongside him, able to contest his obnoxious contentions?

It is obvious what would have happened - this just wouldn't have been allowed. He wouldn't have been afforded the freedom to speak, as we know by how events turned out; and he certainly wouldn't have been invited to speak in such a protected, cosseted setting. But in the comparable case of W&M, it's another matter entirely and the onus & burden of resistance & contestation is placed on those harmed by such speech: those who experience this speech as racist, or worry about its obvious incendiary ramifications for a particular group known to experience racism. It's for the victims to speak out & challenge this speech. I'd like to think there'd be widespread audience revulsion against the W&M thesis, or it would be laughed-out, but I've been following this too long to rely on this being the case - the opposite is, sadly, just as plausible. Probably more so, hence the trepidation to turn up.

And perhaps, were I to muster the courage and will to do so, it might well be only to discover that these 'bold & daring' scholars have insisted on not taking any questions from the floor or on only taking questions which have been vetted in advance to ensure that nothing too tricky comes up, bringing to light the obvious bigotry implicated in their arguments. They've made their debating tactics, evasionary as they are, perfectly plain: they insist on speaking uncontested, so this would come as no surprise.

Readers, what should I do? Should I go and voice my protest, in possibly the most stressful context: my own university, my own campus, surrounded by my peers & students? Should I go and risk seeing my colleagues join the throng of fans adulating these ' brave' theorists, some of whom, frightening as this prospect may be, I might hitherto have respected? Should I stick around to hear the audience applaud their 'courageous' thesis and possibly boo & hiss even louder at those like me who object to this toxic posturing? Should I risk doing this even when I know it'll only exacerbate this already potent boycotting effect? Or should I stay away, just as I stayed away all those years from UCU (and the AUT beforehand)?

As I contemplated all this, getting distracted yet further from those damned deadlines, I've been hunting around for inspiration. Obviously, Engage is always a brilliant source (the link is to a compendium of the critiques W&M's book has attracted - as you will see, there's much to wade through, such are the problems with this familiar and now rejuvenated hate-screed). Then I came upon a rather shocking chart, which says it all with a simple juxtaposition of text extracted, on the one hand, from the W&M book and, on the other, with comparable passages from the Protocols of the Elders of Zion and Henry Ford's International Jew (p.4 of the link).

Please help. The decision is imminent...

~~

** I chose the links on the Watson debacle deliberately: they are all pieces criticizing Watson's views on race & intelligence and arguing he shouldn't be offered the freedom to advance such an incendiary thesis since it risks reigniting racist claims we'd hoped were long-buried. The author of these op-eds is significant: he just so happens to be the very same man who, along with his wife, was the original instigator of the wave of UK boycotts against Israel. The Steven Rose who started it all (yes, it was the Roses, and not - as has been widely claimed - the Palestinian unions!). Oh the irony, the travesty... But what do you expect from someone who, although rightfully indignant against certain forms of racism, dismisses one particular form of racism as 'the cheapest rallying cry of Israel's Zionist apologists'?!

Here are some extracts from the linked comment pieces by Rose, with slight modifications, substituting one racist claim for another: replacing the racist claim about race & intelligence with the racist claim about Jewish world domination. Rose, and apparently the academic consensus on these campuses which invited W&M to speak uncontested, see a problem for racism in one case but seemingly not in the other:

New Statesman
Every time we think we have buried...racist claims about Jewish world domination, some attention-seeker attempts to re-ignite them.

But the scholar’s glamour means that his words, which are without scientific merit, will reignite an otherwise long-buried fight over Jews and power, bring cheer to racists and must be firmly rebutted.

CIF Oct 21st
As for freedom of speech, these freedoms are and must be constrained. We don't have the right to casually cry fire in a crowded theatre, or to use hate speech - at least in Europe, as opposed to the US. If even two of the world's most distinguished academics, speaking with the authority of their academic appointments, are not allowed to get away with such racist assertions, maybe this shameful episode will prove to be a final nail in the coffin of the long and inglorious history of such racist claims.

CIF Oct 24th
I think human rights trump free speech rights... freedom of speech should not be used to abuse and encourage prejudice or violence against minorities for this may damage the human rights of these minorities.

Hello, Shalom! Hello, Salaam!

2007-10-21T13:57:00.000+01:00

The Boycott Boosting Corporation (which is how I now refer to the BBC) went some way towards redeeming itself today for all the damage it does reporting from the region, not least of which is its enormous contribution to sustaining the environment in which the boycott movement was allowed to prosper.

How? With a moving programme, Calls Across the Wall, about a wonderful & humbling initiative for peace, Hello Peace, in which people on either side of the divide can just pick up their phones and dial a toll-free number (*6364) to be put in touch with someone from the other side. You can listen to the programme by clicking here.

Hello Peace is being run under the auspices of the admirable Parents Circle - Family Forum in which

bereaved families, victims from both sides, embark on a joint reconciliation mission while the conflict is still active. Consisting of several hundreds of bereaved families, half Palestinian and half Israeli, The Families Forum has played a crucial role since its inception in 1995, in spearheading a reconciliation process between Israelis and Palestinians. The Forum members have all lost immediate family members due to the violence in the region.

The phoneline was conceived as a way of widening the ambit of the conversational community The Families Forum had engendered, giving ordinary people on both sides the chance to take part in this process. Perhaps the boycotters can take note of how peace & reconciliation is done and quit their pathetic, damaging & negative posturing.

As we learn:

When people are stuck in despair and separation, someone needs to take a first step - someone has to be willing to reach out and begin talking again. The media keeps saying that ordinary Israelis and Palestinians don't want to talk about peace anymore, and don't believe that people on the other side want to talk either. But if hundreds of thousands of telephone calls are made between ordinary Israelis and Palestinians, we can show the media and our leaders that a new story is beginning to happen - that Israelis and Palestinians are actually beginning to talk again about how to move beyond the violence.

Instead of the discriminatory, bigoted measures they advance, these academic boycotters would have done well to emulate this example. They could have taken this 'first step'. They could have made a contribution to that 'new story'. They could, in particular, have endeavoured to bring academics from both sides together, building on local initiatives of this kind (the sort which motivate Professor Sari Nusseibeh, the president of the Al-Quds University, to oppose the boycott), by offering a platform in our universities and on our campuses in which the two sides can come together to seek reconciliation and build peace. Here are some links to information on such initiatives (and more, under the section 'Real Solidarity' & also the last comment posted to my blog-post on counter-boycott initiatives). But, no, instead they decided to boycott all this, alienating those of us who are already working to achieve peace & end the misery in the region. The message of Hello Peace is that:

it's time to stop the killing and start talking again

Will the boycotters even take their call, listen to and heed it?

UPDATE

Even if they don't, someone will (more here). What does it say about union politics if the bosses do the right thing while the unions run foul of discrimination laws?

In place of a boycott...

Last week, four British vice-chancellors visited Israel to strengthen ties with its universities and those in the Palestinian Territories.

...The common theme of both sides was that they were very pleased at the prospect of increased academic contact.

..."What we will be recommending is that more research be put into academic links both with Israel and the Palestinian Territories."

Google Hits

2007-10-12T07:55:00.000+01:00

My site meter is revelatory. When I checked it today for the first time in ages, it informed me that one of the top ten Google searches which have lead people to this blog is:

"Lord Lester" Jew

I don't know why I'd still be shocked, given how I've not descended into this boycotted state for nothing. But still, this shocks me. Google explains the significance of searches involving the word Jew. Obviously, whatever the term used, the nature of the inquiry here says it all. The word is just added confirmation - as if one were needed!

~~~~~~

Yet more evidence of how these boycotters seem to be going about dealing & coming to terms with UCU's opinion from counsel. You know, the one which confirms they've been devoting themselves all this time to a racist campaign, tirelessly committed to instigating bigoted discrimination on our campuses. Well, nothing like proving the charge in how one pursues one's defence!

At least that's clear & transparent then, none of the fine distinctions by which this sort of racism is usually masked. Like this one, set in stone as UCU diktat, decreed in the very same boycott motion whose non-boycotting elements are apparently preserved to this day:

criticism of Israel cannot be construed as anti-semitic

If ever they need evidence that this proposition is false, there they have it - really, really close to home!

If UCU insists that this part of the motion survives, they might want to check out the definition of antisemitism put forward by the European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights (formerly the European Monitoring Centre). As it stands, the proposition enshrined in UCU Motion 30 is just a useful cloak for racists and we all know how UCU has been cloaking in regal cloth and technicolour fibre all summer long a campaign which has now, and very belatedly, been recognized as discriminatory & unlawful.

Since I know of no way one can successfully or even plausibly claim that criticism of Israel - that all & any criticism of Israel - amounts to antisemitism, it's hard to fathom what exactly this part of the motion contributes to anything. It's an inversion, in fact, of how the issue of antisemitism enters the field, since that claim would amount to saying that Israel is exceptional and should be held accountable for its actions in a different way to all other nations; when, in reality, the opposite claim is that which makes the possibility of antisemitism salient. It's precisely when Israel is being held to higher, stricter or more exacting standards than other nations that one is caused to search for some other explanation.

If this part of Motion 30 survives, it would be important for UCU to explain that account has been taken of the definition proposed at the European supra-national level, to which we've often refered to instigate advances in our equality provisions and protections from discrimination. The EU definition rephrases the proposition:

criticism of Israel similar to that leveled against any other country cannot be regarded as antisemitic

And that's on the back of the EU having noted the various "ways in which antisemitism manifests itself with regard to the state of Israel" and the criticism it receives (listed in the above link). At the very least, if this part of Motion 30 is to survive, it would need to be restated, factoring in qualification to take in those occasions when criticism of Israel does indeed amount to antisemitism.

Classically. As this Googling activity demonstrates.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

And we should not forget, in pondering all of this, that one, and only one, motion failed to be carried unanimously at Congress in the cluster of motions dealing with equality/freedom from discrimination issues - can you guess? Yup, you got it :

Antisemitism in the UK and Europe (Barnet College, Hendon)

This union notes:
The 31% Increase in antisemitic incidents in the UK in 2006 over those in 2005.
The OSCE Berlin and Cordoba Declarations on the rise of antisemitism.
The Working Definition on Antisemitism of the European Union Monitor Centre.
The Parliamentary Inquiry into Antisemitism in the UK.

Believes that:
Antisemitism is becoming acceptable in the UK including on University campuses.
Universities must ensure that staff and students work in an atmosphere free from any racial discrimination and intimidation.

Resolves to:
Produce guidelines on antisemitism as part of its anti- racism campaigning.
Develop programmes with the CRE and The Board of Deputies of British Jews to educate academics and students about the dangers of antisemitism.
Implement all the recommendations of the Parliamentary Inquiry into Antisemitism especially those relating to campus antisemitism

Notwithstanding that the motion wasn't passed, let's hope that UCU now applies itself to fulfilling the duties highlighted here, notably that it should work to ensuring "that staff and students [are able again to] work in an atmosphere free from any racial discrimination and intimidation." It has been a long time since I felt my workplace offered anything approximating this atmosphere and prime contributor, of course, with the brutal hit of its symbolic baggage, has been this boycott campaign which UCU bent over (and, I fear, near ruined) itself hosting and platforming.

Let's hope that the opinion from counsel obtained by UCU recently will be helpful to our union in understanding its broader duties more effectively in regard to promoting freedom from discrimination & intimidation on campus, rather than sorely exacerbating it. Judging by this boycott experience, there is obviously much to learn.

Round 2: Boycotters v. Lord Lester!

2007-10-04T20:43:00.000+01:00

Round 2, who am I kidding? More like Round 200!

Over at the excellent & wonderful Engage, it's becoming clear that the boycotters are up to their usual tricks. Presently, their focus is to attack the opinion from counsel obtained by UCU (see previous post) which confirmed what we all knew, namely that this is racism. And they are really embarrassing themselves in the process! That the law should be required is shameful enough - you'd have thought a union today would be one place where we ought to be able to rely on anti-racist instincts being sufficient, without need for recourse to legal opinion! I no longer know why I once thought this.

The boycotters are now busy attacking the lawyer who authored the opinion, speciously attempting to malign the most heroic and valiant Anthony Julius in the process! Over at Harry's Place, I see David T has put this well in describing how the boycotters

accuse UCU of consulting with "Princess Diana's divorce lawyer" (trans: the literary critic, anti-fascist activist, and the legal nemesis of the Holocaust Denier, David Irving: Anthony Julius).

As if this weren't bad enough, it turns out they've even managed to get the wrong guy! At least, that's according to one of UCU's Trustees, who published a letter in the Guardian, saying he's:

familiar with the advice that the union received from Anthony Lester QC, as well as the independent advice the trustees commissioned from Anthony White QC.
[h/t: Engage]

So it transpires that the person who wrote the UCU opinion is none other than Lord Lester! Yes, the same man without whom these human rights and anti-racism protections wouldn't exist at all - here's an extract from his bio:

Between 1974 and 1976, he was Special Adviser to Roy Jenkins, when he had special responsibility for developing policy on race relations, sex discrimination and human rights [the period in which the governing frameworks which have served us since to guard against race and sex discrimination were legislated through Parliament]. He campaigned for thirty years to make the European Human Rights Convention directly enforceable in British courts and introduced two Private Members’ Bills on the subject which became models for the Human Rights Act 1998.

So the boycotters' target, we learn, is in fact the main man behind all these human rights & equality laws, long and hard fought for - yes, those very same laws without which our unions would remain free to exclude Jews (oops, what a slip, I mean, Israelis - not surprising, given a disgraceful history of union exclusion of Jews). And not just this protected group but all such groups - only most, I would venture, are presently pretty safe given how excluders and boycotters seem too busy picking on you-know-who to have time for much else, including, one should add, positive action to further the ends of our union. Happily, the law ensures that they can't get away with this anymore, as Lester's unassailably authoritative opinion confirms.

Over at the impressive civic engagement site TheyWorkForYou,* we're reminded that Lord Lester's recent parliamentary interventions have included voting very strongly against introducing ID cards and against Labour's anti-terrorism laws; and very strongly in favour of equal gay rights. We're informed that his most recent appearance in Parliament involved him quizzing the government on the Al Yamamah deal. I don't need to add that he and his party opposed the war in Iraq. [update: see here for more on why they are really barking up the wrong tree on this one]

I could wish that any of this would finally make the boycotters cease their racist posturing. But I'm no fool - I know it won't. They are so far gone that they just dig deeper, reproducing their racialist stereotypes, in recent days repeating the slander that anti-racism protections are being perverted to silence & stem their movement by "all-powerful rich Jews" and their nasty Lobby. [the link is to that post's update, and there's more of the same in the Harry's Place thread, with a brave poster going by the name of UCU Whistleblower reproducing** some of the filth on the activist list which passes, through the sick filter of our time, for solidarity work]

Whatever initial relief I felt in my last post has promptly vanished since, given that nothing seems to have changed substantively: our activist list is still full of the boycotters' bigotry, and they are as energetic as ever, if not more so; and it's just as chilling & alienating. In consequence, I feel no respite from the boycotting shadow all this casts. Our union is still being paralyzed by a force making it so toxic that some will continue to stay away for reasons which persist in being compelling to me. Now that my vote is no longer required for a ballot on this, I return to my perennial questions (asked in a previous post). All this deleteriously impacts on our working environment and British academia as a whole. I continue to ask myself how long I can remain in the UCU given the discursive community it has spawned and which it continues to platform prominently by way of its activist list. And I even ask how long I can remain embedded in this academic community in my boycotted state. How long will I have to dread going in to work for fear of bumping into one of the boycotters on campus (sadly there seem to be a few of them around)? How long will I have to psych myself up just to open my daily digest from the UCU activist list, let alone summon up the energy and courage to post on there?

All this persists...ineluctably.

~~~~~~~~~~~~

* Through TWFY, I wrote to my MP who signed the anti-boycott EDM. Very helpful, thanks!

** Update: some of these are reproduced by an anonymous poster in comments to this thread who, along with UCU Whistleblower over on the HP thread, is performing the important task of showing non-UCU members (or less active ones) just what is going on here and just why David T's take on the UCU activist list - that it's a veritable 'bigot's playground' - is apt indeed. As Jon Pike has succintly put it, the 'debate' which boycotters are now falsely claiming to have been gagged (by these anti-racism laws) is not about helping Palestinians but all about demonizing Israel. This is what I get in my inbox on a daily basis; and some activists on there, those valiant few who can actually stomach this better than I, get them in real time, fading into their screens: "You've got mail!" No spoiler; no warning of what is to come, when it should read "You've got hate mail!" All this, just for being in the union!

Breaking News (Finally!): UCU BOYCOTT IS UNLAWFUL!!!

2007-09-28T16:00:00.000+01:00

Here's the latest notice from

UCU announced today that, after seeking legal advice, an academic boycott of Israel would be unlawful and cannot be implemented.

Members of the union's strategy and finance committee unanimously accepted a recommendation from UCU general secretary, Sally Hunt, that the union should immediately inform branches and members that:

- A boycott call would be unlawful and cannot be implemented
- UCU members' opinions cannot be tested at local meetings
- The proposed regional tour cannot go ahead under current arrangements and is therefore suspended.

The legal advice makes it clear that making a call to boycott Israeli institutions would run a serious risk of infringing discrimination legislation. The call to boycott is also considered to be outside the aims and objects of the UCU.

The union has been told that while UCU is at liberty to debate the pros and cons of Israeli policies, it cannot spend members' resources on seeking to test opinion on something which is in itself unlawful and cannot be implemented. The union will now explore the best ways to implement the non-boycott elements of the motion passed at congress.

The legal advice states: 'It would be beyond the union's powers and unlawful for the union, directly or indirectly, to call for, or to implement, a boycott by the union and its members of any kind of Israeli universities and other academic institutions; and that the use of union funds directly or indirectly to further such a boycott would also be unlawful.'

The advice also says that 'to ensure that the union acts lawfully, meetings should not be used to ascertain the level of support for such a boycott.'

UCU general secretary, Sally Hunt, said: 'Since congress our first priority has always been to keep the union, and its members, safe during what has been a very difficult time. I hope this decision will allow all to move forwards and focus on what is our primary objective, the representation of our members.

'I believe if we do this we may also, where possible, play a positive role in supporting Palestinian and Israeli educators and in promoting a just peace in the Middle East.'

Thanks SO much to everyone who's spoken out about this, particularly the blogs linked above right, and for the contributions of so many in opposing this racist & exclusionary campaign. At long last!! It's to the great shame of many that what has happened today took so long in happening. And not for want of the thousands of productive hours being wasted for nothing by so many of us... I can safely say I've done little productive research & writing this summer and I know I'm not alone.

The boycott was always symbolic of a larger malaise which has nestled within UK academia and I shall continue to blog about this here. Hopefully I'll now be liberated to touch on these larger issues and find a voice by which to express all this - although I still feel like a Boycotted British Academic (this being a title which has served well to capture & describe wider exclusions & intimidations), hopefully this release from the pressure of having to resist the boycott, and from the undermining shadow it has cast, will enable me finally to speak what seems to be unspeakable in these avenues of academe...

[hat tip: the wonderful Engage]

UCU Members: Sign the Petition for a Ballot!

2007-09-24T19:03:00.000+01:00

Jimmy Donaghey and Jon Pike, two excellent members of UCU, have initiated a petition which calls for a full ballot of members on the boycott motion. There's evidence that this ballot would go against the boycott & therefore the movement is apparently blocking it, in spite of the pledge by UCU's General Secretary (Sally Hunt) to put this to a ballot. Last time, AUT members overturned the motion within weeks by way of such a ballot, and the damage of that boycott was consequently short-lived, curtailed & mitigated.

I'd hoped this whole barmey business had gone away with this decisive result. Oh so misguided for now it has come back & worse! Worse precisely because this hasn't gone to a prompt ballot of all the UCU members...

So I hope MANY will sign, remembering the experience of the journalists who succeeded in stemming the boycott's damaging effects by rising up and allowing the voice of the rank & file to be heard when the elites of the union had stopped listening. And crucial to this process was a petition along these lines...

http://ucu-ballot.org/

UCU Members for a Ballot ask that you please circulate amongst colleagues, on branch e-lists and pass on to people at other institutions. And please send any comments in support of a ballot to info@ucu-ballot.org

[hat tip: the wonderful Engage]

~~~~~~

PS This is the first time I can actually say that I'm happy to be a member of the UCU! At least it's enabled me to add my name to a worthy petition...

Boycott, Non!

2007-09-23T20:26:00.000+01:00

This whole business is old news in France & here are some lessons we might learn from their experience:

Anti-Zionism and the boycott of Israeli products and skills are viewed by French Jews as another form of anti-Semitism. But, unlike other countries, France has successfully countered the phenomenon, launching the France-Israel Foundation in July 2005 to reinforce ties with the Israeli government and encourage collaboration in various fields, from literary exhibits to stem cell research.

The foundation has prevented boycotts that would have isolated Israel in the intellectual and commercial fields. It instigated French investments in the Israeli film industry, for example, leading to the success of the Israeli Film Festival of Paris and to numerous productions and prizes, the latest ones being the awards granted at the Cannes film festival to two Israeli films, "Jellyfish" and "The Band's Visit." Israeli movies, once rare in French theaters, have become common and, at times, even popular.

Those who supported the boycott against Israel, mainly within the pro-Palestinian association CAPJPO (Coordination of the Calls for a Fair Peace in the Middle East), are about to observe a new high in French-Israeli relations since the annual book fair -- the major cultural event of the year -- selected Israel to star the 2008 exhibit.

I hope to hear that our government is following the French example...

[hat tip for link: YIISA (newsletter); photo: ParisDailyPhoto]

My Pathetic Protest: An Update

2007-09-18T14:01:00.000+01:00

Sorry for going silent. A family member, who relies on me for care, was hospitalized & the stress, on top of trying to manage to work while under the shadow of the boycott, was too much for me.

I just wanted to let y'all know that I've heard NOTHING from UCU regarding my protest re withdrawing from the political fund (see post: A Reluctant New UCU Member) although I did eventually receive a very glossy membership pack from them. As an environmentista, I object to the pack & all the ridiculous waste of resources to communicate absolutely nothing which wasn't already available on the web (I joined on-line) - the membership card would have sufficed and perhaps less paper would also have meant giving less prominence to the boycott issue in the pack's materials (about which more, hopefully, in a forthcoming post).

The pack was especially galling coming without any acknowledgment of my act of protest.

Pathetic. Pathetic to be doing this; pathetic that even this small act is apparently being ignored & overlooked, just as the long & difficult letter I'd sent to UCU soon after the Bournemouth Congress at the end of May, was also apparently dismissed - I eventually received a generic reply which seemed to be addressed to a wide recipient-list (I understand that UCU was inundated with letters of protest) & barely touched on the points I'd raised, including the boycotting effect which motivates this blog.

I'm building up courage, and fighting to create some time & energy, to join up the DAN activist list suggested by someone in a previous post, and perhaps engage in more productive protest (although I hear it can make for a draining & depressing experience, hence the trepidation to join in). We'll see...more updates to follow & hopefully by then I'll know whether or not I'm actually contributing to the UCU's political fund (and therefore effectively funding the boycott campaign)!

A reluctant new member for the UCU

2007-08-28T21:21:00.000+01:00

After years of hesitation, I've finally just joined UCU... I pinched my nose and did the deed. YUCK!!!

Having spent so long vacillating between, on the one hand, wanting to have no part in an organization which gives a platform to a campaign which I experience to be racist & exclusionary and, on the other hand, feeling bound to join, for many reasons, none least: in order to fight against these very characteristics. Not being able to abide the fence-sitting anymore, I joined, hoping this 'brave' act might make the self-berating stop for a while but I've instantly gone from guilty non-member to guilty member! Neither position feels comfortable or tolerable - all options are bad. A small act of protest in joining, though - here's an extract from my cover-letter to UCU:

I would like to deduct the part of my subscription which goes to your Political Fund. Please could you arrange this for me? This is in protest against your debate to call for a boycott of Israeli academic institutions, which is currently prominently advertised on your homepage. I would be upset if my membership fees were to fund this campaign and I am hopeful that I can still join UCU without committing myself to supporting what I take to be racist, exclusionary campaign – thanks. My membership is contingent on this act of protest being possible, so do please confirm that this has been arranged.

Future acts of protest in planning - hopefully less pathetic! Keep tuned or posted or whatever...

Professor Shalom Lappin has written extremely cogently about why I should not have joined UCU and good arguments of this sort have kept me away all this time (AUT beforehand). He's right to argue that "to remain in the UCU, and to continue to plead on bended knee for a reversal of the resolutions is as demeaning as it is inefficient." There's an interesting thread on Engage debating the point.

As for me, I waited and waited for inspiration as to what I could do instead of joining UCU and I've come up with nothing persuasive so, in desperation, I joined up. In the interim, I found myself wishing I'd joined the last time my conscience (partly) told me I should, so that I could have resigned with Professor Lappin on this occasion. I wish more had resigned with him - I get the sense that mass resignations helped stymie the recent boycott by the National Union of Journalists. Perhaps if more had resigned, the boycott campaign could have died the death it ought. But it didn't and few resigned, as far as I can tell. And probably many more joined, just as I have now done, apparently rewarding UCU for giving a platform to the boycott movement. OY!

I promise to resign if this fight fails! Which it won't...it can't. Can it? One thing which makes it so awful working under the shadow of this boycott: fear that this just won't go away. Once the 'Israel-demonizing roadshow' over (see 2nd UCU link above), there'll be some new hurdle to dread; another statement from UCU which doesn't quite go far enough; another delay in putting this to a full ballot of members, which would make it clear that a debate about boycotting Israeli academic institutions is not one to which UK academics are willing to commit their energies. Until then, I can only doubt and fear, and continue to feel boycotted...

Arguing against the boycott - how it often feels...

2007-08-28T15:16:00.002+01:00

I sense a need for a virtual forum for (anonymous?)* off-loading on the subject of the boycott movement's damaging effects. I was hoping to write some posts about how horrible all this has been for me but I'm having trouble getting a series of interrelated posts right (given the subject, not so surprising). In the meantime, I want to post something up now, to enable the blog's interactive features, to start what I hope will become this forum. In keeping with good traditions, I'll do so with a joke, which somehow captures the feelings this barmy boycott business has inspired in me, this Boycotted British Academic (BBA), as a result of the silencing and chilling strategies on which the business depends, resulting in BBA invariably sharing the sentiment described in the joke's punch line:

In Jerusalem, an English female journalist heard about an old rabbi who visited the Wailing Wall to pray, twice a day, everyday, for a long, long time.

In an effort to check out the story, she goes to the holy site and there he is!

She watches the bearded old man at prayer--and after about 45 minutes, when he turns to leave, she approaches him for an interview.

"I'm Jane Collins from the BBC, sir, how long have you been coming to the Wailing Wall and praying?" For about 50 years, he informs her.

"50 years! That's amazing! What do you pray for?"

"I pray for peace between the Jews and the Arabs. I pray for all the hatred to stop and I pray for all our children to grow up in safety and friendship."

"And how do you feel, sir, after doing this for 50 years?"

"Like I'm talking to a brick wall."

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
* a post on anonymity to follow shortly