---
title: "Academic boycott of Israel"
chunk: 2/8
source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Academic_boycott_of_Israel"
category: "reference"
tags: "science, encyclopedia"
date_saved: "2026-05-05T04:17:27.825907+00:00"
instance: "kb-cron"
---

=== Association of University Teachers ===
On 22 April 2005, the Council of Association of University Teachers (AUT) voted to boycott two Israeli universities: University of Haifa and Bar-Ilan University. The motions to AUT Council were prompted by the call for a boycott from nearly 60 Palestinian academics and others. The AUT Council voted to boycott Bar-Ilan because it runs courses at colleges in the West Bank (referring to Ariel College) and "is thus directly involved with the occupation of Palestinian territories contrary to United Nations resolutions". It boycotted Haifa because it was alleged that the university had wrongly disciplined Ilan Pappé for supporting a student who wrote about attacks on Palestinians during the founding of the state of Israel. The University denied having disciplined the lecturer. Union members claimed that staff and students [of Israeli universities] who seek to research Israel's history in full are often "victimised".
The AUT's decision was immediately condemned by Jewish groups and many members of the AUT. Critics of the boycott within and outside the AUT noted that at the meeting at which the boycott motion was passed the leadership cut short the debate citing a lack of time. Specifically, the Board of Deputies of British Jews and the Union of Jewish Students accused the AUT of purposely holding the vote during Passover, when many Jewish members could not be present.
The presidents of Jerusalem-based al-Quds University and Hebrew University of Jerusalem issued a joint statement condemning the boycott effort as unproductive towards ending the "shared tragedy" but rather could prolong it:

Bridging political gulfs – rather than widening them further apart – between nations and individuals thus becomes an educational duty as well as a functional necessity, requiring exchange and dialogue rather than confrontation and antagonism. Our disaffection with, and condemnation of acts of academic boycotts and discrimination against scholars and institutions, is predicated on the principles of academic freedom, human rights, and equality between nations and among individuals.
One of the university presidents, Sari Nusseibeh of al-Quds University, continued: "If we are to look at Israeli society, it is within the academic community that we've had the most progressive pro-peace views and views that have come out in favor of seeing us as equals [...] If you want to punish any sector, this is the last one to approach." He acknowledges, however, that his view is a minority one among Palestinian academics.
Zvi Ravner, Israel's deputy ambassador in London, noted, "[t]he last time that Jews were boycotted in universities was in 1930s Germany."
The British National Postgraduate Committee also voted to oppose the boycott. Project officer Andre Oboler said that the boycott "runs contrary to our objective, which is to advance in the public interest the education of postgraduate students within the UK".
In May 2005, the AUT voted to rescind its boycott of two Israeli universities.  The reversal followed internal and external criticism that the boycott undermined academic freedom and peace efforts.

=== National Association of Teachers in Further and Higher Education ===
In May 2006, National Association of Teachers in Further and Higher Education (NATFHE) passed a motion urging members to boycott Israeli academics who did not vocally speak out against their government. The resolution was dismissed by the AUT, with which NATFHE soon merged, and subsequent boycott proposals at later union conferences were opposed by university leadership and did not advance beyond statements.

==== Criticism of the NATFHE ====
A group of eight Nobel laureates denounced the policy before it was passed, suggesting that it would limit academic freedom.
Brian Klug made this criticism of the NATFHE motion:

[E]ven if the policy and rationale were clear and unambiguous, there is a deeper problem with motions of this sort that prevents them from attracting a broad base of support: they rely on the false (or limited) analogy implied by the word "apartheid". This is not to say that there are no points of comparison, for there are – just as there are in a host of other countries where minority ethnic and national groups are oppressed. Nor is it even to say that the suffering experienced by Palestinians is less than that endured by "non-whites" in South Africa: it may or may not be (although I am not sure how to do the sums). But as I have argued elsewhere: "The validity of the analogy does not depend on a catalogue of atrocities, however appalling."
The Association of Jewish Sixthformers (AJ6) issued a press release expressing dismay and concern "about the affects  [sic] of any boycott on Jewish and Israeli Sixthformers".  Specifically, AJ6 pointed to "partnerships and exchange visits with Israeli schools and colleges may be under threat", and "Jewish students who study in Israel during their Gap Years are worried that teachers may refuse to provide them with references for these programmes."
The Anti-Defamation League issued a statement which condemned the motion explaining:

It is profoundly unjust for academics in the only democratic country in the Middle East – the only country where scholarship and debate are permitted to freely flourish – to be held to an ideological test and the threat of being blacklisted because of their views. No one would expect a British or American professor to have to withstand such scrutiny of their political views. Yet, when it comes to Israel a different standard applies.
The British government, through Foreign and Commonwealth Office Minister Lord Triesman, issued a statement that the motion was "counterproductive and retrograde" although the British Government recognized "the independence of the NATFHE".

==== Response to criticism ====
Paul Mackney, the general secretary of NATFHE and who opposed the motion as passed, is quoted after the fact by The Guardian: