AUT Council today decided to boycott Haifa University and the Bar-Ilan University.

The executive committee will issue guidance to AUT members on these decisions.

Council delegates also referred a call to boycott the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and the executive committee will investigate the background to this and will report in due course.

Council delegates also agreed to circulate to all local associations a statement from Palestinian organisations calling for an academic boycott of Israeli institutions.

New York, NY, April 19, 2005 … More than five hundred (500) academics from universities around the world have signed a letter, sponsored by the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) and Scholars For Peace in the Middle East, condemning a proposal to boycott Israeli academic institutions. The proposal, demanding that British universities cut links with three of Israel's leading universities, will be debated at the annual conference of Britain's Association of University Teachers (AUT) on April 22...

New York, NY, April 22, 2005 … The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) today strongly condemned the decision of British academics, gathered at the annual Council of the Association of University Teachers (AUT) in Eastbourne, to boycott two of Israel's leading universities. The AUT also rejected a resolution to engage in dialogue with Israeli academics, while voting for more dialogue with Palestinian academics.

"The Association of University Teachers has launched a direct assault on academic freedom," said Abraham H. Foxman, ADL National Director. "We condemn this misguided and ill-timed decision to boycott academics from the only country in the Middle East where universities enjoy political independence. It is ironic that the British academics called for an end to dialogue at a time when Israelis and Palestinians are engaged in dialogue seeking a framework for peace...

...The academic boycott is a subject I know from up close. Miriam Shlesinger, who translated my books into English, was among its first victims when, in May 2002, she was dismissed from the editorial board of the Translator, a journal founded and edited by Professor Mona Baker. In her message to Miriam (and to Professor Gideon Toury, another Israeli editorial board member), Baker explained: "I can no longer live with the idea of cooperating with Israelis as such, unless it is explicitly in the context of campaigning for human rights in Palestine."

Miriam, whom I've known for many years, is the former head of Amnesty International in Israel and a well-known peace activist. Baker, by the way, was not the first to call for a boycott of her academic work. Israeli rightwingers had been irked by her signature on some petition and had called upon students at Israeli universities to refrain from attending classes given by her and others of her ilk. Unlike Baker, they at least had a case: they wanted to boycott Miriam because of her views...

...Which brings me back to the question that has bothered me ever since I was a kid. Why did the god of the Hebrews (and for the sake of disclosure, I'm a Hebrew myself) smite the first-born of Egypt? The answer that I've come up with is not very flattering: I think he did it mainly because he was lazy, wrathful and just. Lazy, because instead of trying to work out a reasonable solution and finding out who was really to blame, he opted for the easy way out. Wrathful, because it's no fun discovering that your Chosen People have been dispossessed and oppressed. And just, because he is God, and Gods, like so many academics I've met in my life, are always just - or at least, they're always convinced they are.