The House of Representatives unanimously passed a resolution attacking the boycott call from the leadership of the University and College Union (UCU), Britain’s largest trade union for academics.
The full text of the resolution is here. Some excerpts:
Whereas these unions have a hypocritical double standard in condemning Israel, a free and democratic state, while completely ignoring gross human rights abuses occurring throughout the Middle East and around the world;
Whereas Article 19, section 2, of the United Nations Covenant on Civil and Political Rights states that, `Everyone shall have the right to . . . receive and impart information and ideas of all kinds, regardless of frontiers, either orally, in writing or in print, in the form of art, or through any other media of his choice’;
Whereas these and other attempts to stifle intellectual freedom through the imposition of an academic boycott are morally offensive and contrary to the values of freedom of speech and freedom of inquiry;
Whereas American Nobel laureate Prof. Steven Weinberg refused to participate in a British academic conference due to the National Union of Journalist’s boycott and stated that he perceived `a widespread anti-Israel and anti-Semitic current in British opinion’; and
Whereas the senseless boycotting of Israeli academics contributes to the demonization and attempted delegitimization of the State of Israel: Now, therefore, be it
Resolved, That the House of Representatives–
(1) condemns the vote by the leadership of the University and College Union of May 30, 2007, to consider at the branch level a boycott of Israeli academics and academic institutions;
(2) urges the international scholarly community, the European Union, and individual governments, to reject, or continue to oppose vigorously, calls for an academic boycott of Israel;
(3) urges educators and governments throughout the world, especially democratically-elected governments, to reaffirm the importance of academic freedom;
(4) urges other unions and organizations to reject the troubling and disturbing actions of the UCU leadership; and
(5) urges the general members of the UCU to reject the call of the union’s leadership to boycott Israel.
