http://www.news.utoronto.ca/bin6/070703-3270.asp

President David Naylor expressed the University of Toronto’s fundamental opposition to academic boycotts in a June 25 speech to Governing Council.

Naylor’s remarks were made in response to a June 8 vote by the British University and College Union, a group representing a substantial number of academics in Great Britain, to consider an academic boycott of Israeli universities and scholars as a way to show their displeasure over Israel’s policies regarding Palestinians.

Naylor told Governing Council that academic boycotts are antithetical to the fundamental values of the university and that the University of Toronto could best protect and enhance human rights by guarding and promoting academic freedom and free expression.

“The university strenuously objects in principle to any boycotts as broad-brush politicization of academic discourse,” Naylor said. “The university specifically objects to the scapegoating of any country’s academics by those whose quarrel is with the policies of that country’s government.”

He noted that academic boycotts targeting scholars of any nation were the first steps down the dangerous slope of politicization of the global academic enterprise and that the eventual outcome would be diminished discourse among scholars, their students and their societies.

“To the extent that such discourse is diminished, so also is the prospect for peacefully advancing the human enterprise in all its dimensions,” he said.

Naylor told Governing Council that in the years ahead, it is likely the University of Toronto will deepen its academic ties with Israeli universities as well as with other postsecondary and advanced research institutions worldwide. He also noted that individual scholars at the university would continue to collaborate actively with international colleagues solely on the basis of shared academic interests.

In consultation with Governing Council’s executive committee, the president has sent a letter to the general secretary of the British University and College Union explaining the university’s position on academic boycotts and its concerns about their deleterious effects on academic discourse.

Naylor’s remarks to Governing Council are contained in the minutes of the meeting at www.utoronto.ca/govcncl/bac/details/gc/2006-07/gcr20070625.pdf
The letter is available online at www.news.utoronto.ca/newsbin07/bucu.pdf