The international outcry against the call by the UK's University and College Union (UCU) to boycott Israeli academic institutions has strengthened with a petition by academics reaching 10,000 signatures.

The petition, which calls on academics to show solidarity with their Israeli counterparts, raised over 10,000 signatures in seven weeks.

In response to the May 30 boycott vote, a campaign was launched by Scholars for Peace in the Middle East, an organization of scholars with more than 18,000 academics and professional members, demanding the boycott be overturned. The initiative was led by Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz (read his JPost blog) and Prof. Steven Weinberg, a Nobel Prize laureate in physics from the University of Texas.

The petition urged scholars to stand in solidarity with "our Israeli academic and professional colleagues" and that for the purpose of any academic boycott targeting Israel, the signatories agreed to regard themselves as "Israeli academics" and decline to participate "in any activity from which Israeli academics are excluded."

"Today more than 10,000 of the world's leading scholars speak together with one voice to demand academic freedom for all scholars and to declare that we are all Israeli academics for purposes of any academic boycott," Weinberg said.

Thirty-two Nobel Prize laureates and 53 university and colleges presidents worldwide and from across the political spectrum, along with an array of heads of academic departments and professional societies, have signed the petition...