The British academic boycotts: The model is not South Africa

While researching this week’s podcast, I discovered something very interesting. When the world boycotted South African apartheid, they initiated an academic boycott as well. But when it came down to the type of boycott, there was much disagreement.

The ethical and other issues surrounding the academic boycott deeply divided the academic community, both within and outside South Africa. Boycott proponents argued that academics should not be treated as an elite detached from the political and social environment in which it functions, especially since some of the South African universities seemed to be tools of the Nationalist government.

Opponents of the boycott argued that ideas and knowledge should be treated differently than tangible commodities, that obstacles to information access could actually hurt the victims of apartheid (for example, retard medical research and, ultimately, reduce the quality of health care), and that an academic boycott (in contrast to economic, trade, or political boycott) would not even be noticed by the South African government. Change is much more likely to occur by providing information than by withholding it.

A compromise position, advocated by some, was that of “selective boycott” or “selective support”-organizations in South Africa should be boycotted if they practiced apartheid and supported if they opposed it. This approach was also severely criticized both because of the practical problems of implementation and because it implicitly endorsed the idea that political views are valid determinants of who should attend scholarly meetings, whose work should be published, and so on.

In other words, the kind of boycott that is being proposed by the British teachers’ unions was considered so reprehensible that academics refused to use it to boycott South Africa.

This really puts the AUT and NATFHE boycotts in perspective, particularly when they throw around the words “apartheid” and “South Africa” so much when discussing the boycott.

But wait, it gets better. The Illinois Institute of Technology surveyed academics at 21 South African universities to determine the effects of the boycott. Their conclusion? It did almost nothing except make the professors feel isolated.

• The academic boycott was more of an irritation than a true obstacle to scholarly progress.
• In most cases, scholars and libraries were able to circumvent the boycott one way or another-for example, by using “third parties” in less antagonistic countries although with delays and at greater expense.
• The academic boycott actually had some effects that could be considered beneficial. Lacking convenient access to foreign textbooks, some faculty members wrote their own, more appropriate to the South African situation; some departments moved from the study of Dutch literature to the study of the domestic literature.
• The boycott had intangible, psychological effects that are difficult to assess. Many scholars felt left out, isolated, unjustly discriminated against. Suspicions were created-for example, that a submission was really rejected for political reasons, not the reasons claimed, or that the high incidence of inactive research materials, such as biological agents and antibodies, received by South African institutions was not a mere coincidence. Barriers to the free exchange of information with foreign scholars seem not to have improved collaboration at the local level. Indeed, scholars frequently felt that the isolation brought more local acrimony than local harmony.

Now, apply the results of this study to what the British unions intend to do, and then add the handicap that no other nation has joined the boycott, and the results become even more ridiculous. In fact, the results get downright inexplicable. One might even say that the only reason for the boycott is to punish Jews. Not Israelis.

Because let’s face it, British has a long, disgraceful record of anti-Semitism. Britain is the nation that directly contributed to the current situation, by their misrule of the Palestinian Mandate. Britain is the nation that refused to let refugees from the Nazis flee to the Palestinian Mandate. Britain is the nation that stood by as Arabs rioted against and massacred Jews who lived legally in the Mandate, having legally bought land and turned it into farms and businesses. Britain is the nation that restricted Jewish immigration into the Mandate, but cast a blind eye onto Arab immigration.

So let’s stop calling the British academic boycott anything but what it is: Another British attempt to punish Jews for being Jewish. And shame, shame on the British Jews who are advocating this boycott. It is, as Harvard President Larry Summers said, anti-Semitic both in effect and in intent.

Let us repeat the yourish.com mantra at this point: Anti-Semites of the world, just die already.