Monday, September 12, 2005
Just when you thought it was safe to go back for another double chai latte in the student union (wearing your kippa)...
The British Association of University Teachers briefly passed, and then fairly quickly overturned, an academic boycott of certain Israeli Universities. But there's a bigger, badder, more sinister union, NATFHE...and it's going down the same path.
Adloyada has an excellent, comprehensive post. Don't miss it. I've a feeling we're going to be talking about this one for awhile.
Is it just that the news is in English, so we can focus on it more, or does Britain really have the particular problem it seems to?
(Hat Tip: Judith)
The reason it is so prominent in the UK (as opposed to the US and I presume other major English speaking countries)is because of the nature of the unions involved in higher education in the UK. In the US, the overarching organization of academics is a professional association. In the UK, there are the two unions AUT and NATFHE, both of which are affiliated to the TUC and the wider trade union movement. These unions have provided fertile ground for Marxist and Trotskyist activists to run and develop campaigns such as the boycott campaign. The UK trade union movement has a long tradition of "solidarity" action which was particularly strongly developed and exploited by Communist and Communist front organizations over the years. The subsequent emergence of the New Left in the 68 era also fostered the influence of more radical and posturing Trotskyist movements.
The UN Durban conference on racism provided the template for combined agitation by radicals within the British university unions and Palestinian stalinist-style regimented unions (including "writer's " unions)
You may find this article
http://www.jcpa.org/phas/phas-36.htm
gives further background on the relative passivity of the Jewish community in countering this union-based radical campaigning. However, it does not provide an analysis of the active and malign role of radicals within these unions.
Thank you for that explanation!
I should say, though, that my somewhat rhetorical question was more aimed at the general panoply of anti-Semitic events and actions we see coming out of Britain these days -- where there's a seeming inability to speak out against, or even an adoption of the Jihadi mindset.
I don't know that it's any worse in Britain than in the rest of Europe, but sometimes it seems so.