A British higher-education teachers’ union passed a resolution on Israel at its annual conference recently that was stunning for its rejection of academic values and simple bigotry. The resolution calls Israel’s policies toward Palestinians “apartheid policies” and urges the union’s 67,000 members to boycott Israeli academics unless they publicly forswear those policies.

For starters, why did the union focus on Israel, in a world full of noxious regimes? But beyond that, the National Association of Teachers in Further and Higher Education should not be in the business of political vetting, anymore than any other group that calls itself an academic organization. They might as well demand that their own members sign a loyalty oath. Joseph

McCarthy must have left some drafts behind that could be tweaked for the purpose.

Astonishingly, the resolution garnered 53 percent of the votes at the union’s annual conference, even though the secretary general, Paul Mackney, surprised the gathering by coming out against it. Last year, a similar resolution was passed by another British union, the Association of University Teachers, but it was yanked after a procedural challenge. Drafters of the new manifesto of intolerance craftily took steps to avoid the same fate by making their resolution “advisory.” The two unions are slated to merge soon, and the resolution thankfully will not be a policy of the new union unless it adopts it.

The issue here, however, is not whether the resolution has teeth, nor is it whether Israel is open to criticism, or whether British academics have the right to criticize it. Indeed, Israeli scholars, far from serving as propagandists for their state, are often among the strongest critics of their government’s policies. The single issue is the arrogance of those British academics so blinded by an ideological antipathy for Israel that they would undermine the very foundations of academic freedom. All they have achieved is to draw ridicule to themselves.