[SPME Editor’s Note: Howard Kahn, co-coordinator of SPME-UK has received the following request from the Fair Play Campaign Group for SPME to distribute to its UK-based members. We urge your involvement before the stated deadline.]

Israel Science Day is a project aimed at school years 12 and 13, designed to inspire them about science. The days feature lectures and workshops by Israeli scientists on various contemporary scientific issues and discoveries. Israel Science Day is being hosted at the Manchester Museum of Science today, and Science museum in London on Thursday. The events are organised by the ZF is conjunction with Israeli universities.

BRICUP, the Israel-boycott group, campaigned against the events and gathered a number of signatures to a letter calling for the museums to cancel them. The letter was printed in the press, and covered on the front page of Today’s Independent. However, both of the museums have refused to cancel the events, and they are continuing as planned.

We are organising a letter condemning the attempts to boycott Israeli academics and disrupt a peaceful, non-political educational event. This will hopefully be printed in Thursday’s Independent.

If you are British-based and involved in the sciences, please consider adding your name to the letter (below). Include your name and relevant academic titles or science link. We will need your agreement by 12:30pm on Wednesday.

To sign the letter, email scienceday@stoptheboycott.org

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Dear Sir,

We were saddened by attempts to cancel the “Israel Science Day” lectures and workshops for schoolchildren. Whatever our opinions on the actions of the Israeli Government, scientists and academics should not be punished simply for their nationality.

The group of protesters peddled a discredited academic boycott inside the University and College Union, which was widely condemned as discriminatory and abandoned. They are now trying to prevent British schoolchildren from being inspired by scientific discovery and innovation.

Science crosses borders and transcends national and political divides. It can unite people, but the protesters seek only to divide and exclude. At a time of high community tensions, these boycott calls are especially pernicious.

We welcome the Science Museum’s principled position in refusing to cancel this event, and hope that the “Israel Science Day” events inspire British pupils to a future of their own scientific innovations and successes.