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A motion to boycott Israeli academics, approved two weeks ago by the National Association of Teachers in Further and Higher Education, Britain's largest academic trade union, was cancelled on Sunday afternoon. Several factors in the boycott's cancellation were cited, foremost among them international pressure from academic organizations. Another influence was the threat of legal proceedings by union members who claimed the boycott would hurt their ability to do research. The union's official statement had declared that "[The] Conference notes [the] continuing Israeli apartheid policies, including [the] construction of the exclusion wall, and discriminatory educational practices." A similar boycott against the...

UCL Expresses Disgust at Israel Academic Boycott (graphic) Academic freedom in the UK allows censorship of Israel while ignoring real threats to democracy such as Iran, Syria, Saudi Arabia and North Korea. By Joel Leyden Israel News Agency Jerusalem----May 30...... UCL President and Provost Malcolm Grant today expressed his concern at the vote by delegates at the National Association of Higher and Further Education (NATFHE) conference for a boycott of Israel universities and academics unless they publicly dissociate themselves from the policies of the state of Israel. It echoes a resolution that was adopted last year by the Association of...

An Israeli group is is planning to brief the British teachers' association on a new Hebrew University program, approved last week, to grant undergraduate degrees to Shin Bet security services personnel. The Israeli initiative favors imposing sanctions on Israeli organizations that cooperate with the occupation. [snip] The members of the Israeli initiative to approach NATFHE, both Jews and Arabs, say they understand they will not garner great support in Israel but that they want to give moral support and information to organizations abroad regarding sanctions against supporters of the occupation. ...

BRUSSELS (EJP)---The Brussels regional parliament has blocked the implementation of a cooperation agreement between Belgian and Israeli universities on neurosurgery research because of political considerations, EJP has learned. A scientific and industrial cooperation agreement, signed in 1998 between the governments of the Brussels regional government and Israel, was suspended in March 2002, in the midst of the second intifada, by a Socialist-Christian-Democrat-Green majority of the parliament on the ground that it should be freeze “until a peace agreement between Israel and Palestine will allow a fructuous cooperation.” Since then, several demands, mainly within the liberal opposition, have been introduced in...

LONDON The Association of University Teachers (AUT) has received a flood of protests, accompanied by an increasing number of resignations, following its decision to adopt boycotts against Israeli universities last Friday. The backlash, which may take the form of mass resignations from the union, has seen an outpouring of protests by Jewish and non-Jewish academics across Britain. John Vail, lecturer in political economy at Newcastle University, wrote in an e-mail to fellow academics: "The boycott is blatantly discriminatory and reeks of double standards." He added: "Although I have no current research links with Israeli academics, this has made me want...

A reader has sent me the following deeply disturbing account of the current atmosphere on a British law course: 'I must say it's been an eye-opener for me regarding the level of antizionism/antisemitism I have encountered from the people on the course, many of whom have training contracts and will go into practice as the next generation of lawyers. Upon realising the hostility I decided not to tell anyone that I was Jewish. 'One day, at the end of a workshop, someone raised the issue that an Israeli soldier was in the headlines for shooting a Palestinian boy. Three other...