Harry's Place and the Bullies of UCU

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

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.

Beyond Words: Post Hydra

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

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)

Somebody Noticed!

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)

Update on the Bigot's Playground

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!

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

Anyone following this bonkers boycott might well think the whole thing's over, finished, one for the history books (see under: racism in the British union movement).

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!

Round 2: Boycotters v. Lord Lester!

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!

UCU Members: Sign the Petition for a Ballot!

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]




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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...

My Pathetic Protest: An Update

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

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...