A Pennsylvania-based organization that campaigns for peace in the Middle East “consistent both with Israel’s right to exist as a sovereign Jewish state within safe and secure borders, and with the rights and legitimate aspirations of her neighbors,” says it has drawn more than 10,000 signatures to an online petition organized in response to a move by Britain’s main faculty union to consider an academic boycott of Israeli universities and academics.
“We all agree that singling out Israelis for an academic boycott is wrong,” the group, Scholars for Peace in the Middle East, states in its petition. “We, the undersigned, hereby declare ourselves to be Israeli academics for purposes of any academic boycott. We will regard ourselves as Israeli academics and decline to participate in any activity from which Israeli academics are excluded.”
The thousands of academics who have signed the petition so far include 32 Nobel laureates and 53 university and foundation presidents.
The petition was drafted in part by the Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz and by Steven Weinberg, the Nobel physics laureate and a professor of physics at the University of Texas at Austin, who canceled a trip to Britain earlier this year over what he sees as a growing mood of anti-Semitism in the country.
Edward S. Beck, president of Scholars for Peace in the Middle East, said the group started the petition in response to the decision in late May by Britain’s University and College Union to pass a motion calling for debate of an academic boycott of Israel (The Chronicle, June 8).
“When the UCU took this action to prolong the debate about something that academics generally regard as a violation of academic freedom — in other words, the issue of the boycott of Israel — we decided to say that if you’re going in that direction, you’re going to have to boycott me as well,” Mr. Beck said. “This is the grassroots saying, Enough already.”
Academic boycotts are “inherently unacceptable” no matter what the context, said Mr. Beck. He emphasized that Scholars for Peace in the Middle East is not a Jewish organization and has academics from around the world on its board of directors, as well as individuals from several countries in the Middle East in its 18,000-strong network of academics.
In response to the group’s petition, the British faculty union sought to emphasize, as it has since the boycott-related motion was passed, that the international condemnation the union has engendered is premature. “There is no academic boycott of Israeli institutions at the moment,” the union’s general secretary, Sally Hunt, said in a written statement. “I am on record many times as saying that the union should conduct a full ballot of its members on this issue to ensure we are fully representing their wishes following the debate.”
Matt Waddup, the union’s head of campaigns, said the Scholars for Peace in the Middle East petition will have “no bearing” on how the union proceeds. “We are a trade union,” he said. “We are used to international pressure.”
