The Jerusalem Post

http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1212659732411&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull

The University and College Union (UCU) are wavering on whether to implement a motion calling for the boycott of Israeli academia knowing the motion is “illegal” and “discriminatory,” according to anti-boycott campaigners.

At the first meeting of the union’s National Executive Committee (NEC) on Friday, members failed to make a decision on the motion passed that will in effect reintroduce an academic boycott of Israel.

Instead members referred the motion to the Strategy and Finance Committee (SFC), which will examine new legal advice the UCU is seeking and will then decide if any parts of the motion can be implemented.

“If a boycott were legal, the union would not have hesitated in implementing it,” Lorna Fitzsimons, co-chair of the Stop the Boycott (STB) campaign said. “It is clearly playing for time, its actions show that the union knows what we have known for the past four years – that a boycott is illegal and will be challenged in the courts.

“What is perplexing in the extreme is the UCU’s decision to continue to pursue this when it knows that it will end the same sticky way as last year,” Fitzsimons added.

The SFC will report to a new committee to be chaired by UCU general secretary Sally Hunt and elected by the NEC, who will ultimately decide whether there are grounds for the motion to be implemented.

“The NEC has failed to seize a key opportunity to take decisive action and show leadership on the boycott issue,” Jeremy Newmark, STB co-chair said. “Instead, it’s produced a bureaucratic fudge resulting in a discriminatory motion remaining on the union’s policy books for months.

“This is now a question of leadership, how long does Sally Hunt expect people to wait for the UCU to decide whether or not it will break the law in order to punish Israeli academics? Organizations with a commitment to anti-racism may choose to review their own relationships to a union with an official policy that promotes discrimination,” he added.

The latest move will undoubtedly come as a disappointment to those who have publicly criticized the motion. People as diverse as the prime minister, the higher education minister, the shadow education minister, the Foreign Office, Israeli and Palestinian Trade Unions as well as the heads of Universities UK [an organization of executive heads of all UK universities] and the Russell Group [an association of leading UK research-intensive universities] have all condemned the union’s decision to call for a boycott.