Friday, March 7, 2008
This is just a quick link to follow -- an "aside." These are links to interesting things that, for one reason or another, I didn't place into a full posting. Click the link to visit the full article. Go to the blog index for a regular listing of posts.
Ronnie Fraser: The Academic Boycott of Israel: A Review of the Five-Year UK Campaign to Defeat It - '...To conclude with a caveat, there are two elements to the Palestinian boycott campaign: divestment and sanctions. Divestment is at present only active in the United States, but it may come to Europe sooner rather than later. Ultimately it is not the individuals and the institutions represented in the battle against the boycott or similar campaigns that will suffer the consequences of a lack of a clear strategy. It is Israel, which is the basic uniting force.'
Ronnie,
An interesting article, but I am suprirsed that you have omitted the anti-boycott activities based on the protectino of acdemic freedom that academic organizations outside the UK have been enaged in. For a sample of reactions to the 2002 and 2007 boycotts, see, respectively, http://www.safs.ca/boycottmain.html anhttp://www.safs.ca/boycottsmain.htmld http://www.safs.ca/boycottmain.html.
Also some of my pieces on this issue both in 2002 and 2007 are in http://www.psych.utoronto.ca/users/furedy/academ_free.htm, for example http://www.psych.utoronto.ca/users/furedy/Papers/af/Antisem07web.doc.
I think it is especially important that a lot of these organizations that have opposed hte boycott are neither Jewish nor necessarily pro Israel in political terms. Rather, the opposition is based on an understanding of the nature of academic freedom, and this understanding is not confined to British academia.
All the bes, John