Skip to main content

AUT BOYCOTT OF BAR ILAN AND HAIFA UNIVERSITIES

PERSONAL STATEMENT BY PROFESSOR GEOFFREY ALDERMAN

The following statement was issued by Professor Geoffrey Alderman in London, England, on Monday night, 25 April 2005, following the decision by the Association of University Teachers, taken at the AUT's Annual Conference on Friday 22 April, to boycott the Universities of Bar Ilan and Haifa:

"I am an AUT member of some 36 years' standing, and a former Chair of its London Committee.

I am shocked and saddened that at its annual conference last week, timed to coincide with the eve of the Passover fesival, the Association saw fit to pass two ill-considered and spiteful resolutions calling on AUT members to boycott two Israeli universities.

Leaving aside the legality of what the resolutions propose, in terms of relevant anti-discrimination, equal opportunities and employment legislation, I am saddened that the AUT has allowed itself to be used as the tool of those whose agenda is aimed at the denial of the right of Jewish national self-determination and I am shocked at the assault on academic freedom that these resolutions embody.

Academic freedom is about the free exchange of ideas. The record of Israeli universities in this regard is very strong - much stronger than the oppressive record of universities in the Arab and Islamic states that surround Israel, but about which the AUT seems unconcerned.

I understand that, following the passage of these resolutions, some colleagues have resigned their AUT membership. I do not intend to do so. Instead, I call upon my fellow AUT members to ignore the resolutions and to treat them with the contempt they deserve."

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

  A  MILLER'S TALE On Friday 1 st October the University of Bristol issued a statement [1] in relation to Dr David Miller, who until that date (and from 2018) had been Professor of Sociology at that University. The statement told us that Professor Miller was no longer employed by the University, and it explained, in very general terms, why:   We have a duty of care to all students and the wider University community, in addition to a need to apply our own codes of conduct consistently and with integrity. Balancing those important considerations, and after careful deliberation, a disciplinary hearing found Professor Miller did not meet the standards of behaviour we expect from our staff and the University has concluded that Professor Miller’s employment should be terminated with immediate effect.   The background - or at least some background – to this decision to dismiss Professor Miller is I think well known. As I noted in the Jewish News last March [2] , for some cons
2 comments
Read more

THE JEWISH CHRONICLE: BEATING HEART OR BLEEDING HEART?

In recent weeks I’ve given interviews to British, Israeli and even German newspapers on the subject of the fate of the Jewish Chronicle. Naturally I have been careful to declare a number of interests. It was for the Jewish Chronicle that from 2002 until 2016 I wrote the paper’s weekly anchor comment column. I never missed a deadline. Besides filing these columns I wrote others for the paper, including book reviews and obituaries. Then I should add that as part of my academic research I have actually read every edition of the JC, from its very first in 1841. I still resort to its invaluable online searchable archive to check this fact or that. In common with many other newspapers the JC has been struggling financially in recent years. In 2018 it posted a loss of around £1.5 million. Its immediate future appeared to have been secured by donations from (as the Financial Times unhelpfully put it) “unnamed individuals,” but evidently this was not enough to sav
1 comment
Read more