[17] It read: Despite widespread international condemnation for its policy of violent repression against the Palestinian people in the Occupied Territories, the Israeli government appears impervious to moral appeals from world leaders.
[19] In response to the open letter, Leonid Ryzhik, a senior professor in mathematics at the University of Chicago, led a rival web-based petition that condemned the original's "unjustly righteous tone" and warned that the boycott has a "broader risk of very disruptive repercussions for a wide range of international scientific and cultural contacts."
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.
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".
[31] After the backlash and condemnation – both internal and external – members of the AUT, headed by Open University lecturer and Engage founder Jon Pike – gathered enough signatures to call a special meeting on the subject.
Reasons cited for the decision were: the damage to academic freedom, the hampering of dialogue and peace effort between Israelis and Palestinians, and that boycotting Israel alone could not be justified.
[33] In May 2006, on the last day of its final conference, National Association of Teachers in Further and Higher Education (NATFHE) passed motion 198C, a call to boycott Israeli academics who did not vocally speak out against their government: "The conference invites members to consider their own responsibility for ensuring equity and non-discrimination in contacts with Israeli educational institutions or individuals, and to consider the appropriateness of a boycott of those that do not publicly dissociate themselves from such policies.
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.
[11]Tamara Traubmann and Benjamin Joffe-Walt, reporting for The Guardian, conducted an analysis of "whether the campaigns against such boycotts are actually motivated by concerns for academic freedom, or whether they are using the universalist ideal to stifle critical discussion of Israel".
Under cross-examination, UCU general secretary Sally Hunt admitted that Fraser "would be entitled to infer ... that the union was not taking antisemitism seriously."
[43] In April 2002, during the Al-Aqsa Intifada, around the time of the publication of the open letter in The Guardian, the Coordination des Scientifiques pour une Paix Juste au Proche-Orient, a group of French academics, published a call for a boycott of Israeli scientific institutions on the web.
The New York Times reported that ASA's president Curtis Marez argued that America has "a particular responsibility to answer the call for boycott because it is the largest supplier of military aid to the state of Israel".
Marez acknowledged that the United States has previously, and is currently, the largest supplier of military aid to many governments, including some with poor human rights records, but explained that Israel is the only country in which "civil society groups" had specifically asked the ASA to launch a boycott.
[79]Hamid Dabashi, a professor of Iranian studies at Columbia University, is on the advisory board of the U.S. Campaign for the Academic & Cultural Boycott of Israel.
The group has called for increased disclosure of university finances to establish that Columbia funds are not being used towards "maintenance of the Israeli occupation and human rights abuses in Gaza and the West Bank", and advocates divestment of university funds from any companies that profit from what it describes as the "continued occupation of Palestinian lands, the maintenance of illegal Israeli settlements and the walls being built around Gaza, the West Bank and Jerusalem".
One CPF member described the group's goals in a 3 March article for Columbia's newspaper, stating, "by divesting from companies that do business with the occupation, we can put global pressure on the Israeli government to end it.
[81] In March 2009, the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) reiterated its opposition to any academic boycott of Israel (or any other country) but added that discussion of the Israel-Palestinian conflict should be encouraged.
The president of Kenyon College dismissed it as a "geopolitical tool", endorsing the decision of its American Studies program to secede as an institutional member of the ASA.
The president of Wesleyan University deplored this "politically retrograde resolution", describing it as an irresponsible attack under the guise of phony progressivism.
Supporters of the legislation claim that its purpose to oppose "discriminatory boycotts which impede rather than advance the peace process and that seek to deny Israelis the right to free speech on American campuses".
Those opposing the bill claim that it would fiercely violate the First Amendment to the United States Constitution, and many doubt its efficacy as a response to the ASA's boycott movement.
CUPE-Ontario leader Sid Ryan stated, "we are ready to say Israeli academics should not be on our campuses unless they explicitly condemn the university bombing and the assault on Gaza in general.
"[103] CUPE's national president, Paul Moist, issued a statement declaring his opposition to the motion and saying, "I will be using my influence in any debates on such a resolution to oppose its adoption."
[106] The University of Western Sydney's Student Association (UWSSA) formally affiliated to the "Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel" in February 2009, following a request from PACBI.
"[108] In 2013, the issue of Academic Boycotts and the BDS campaign received significant press treatment when a suit was filed against professor Jake Lynch, the director of the Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies at the University of Sydney, by Shurat HaDin, a pro-Israel legal lobby organization.
The 30 page suit focusses on Lynch's denying a sabbatical appointment to professor Dan Avnon of Hebrew University because of his center's pro-BDS policy not to support Israeli academics.
[115] In December 2022 the Union of Students in Ireland unanimously passed a motion to support BDS and "denounce the apartheid that Israel is committing in Palestine".
"[117] On 26 September 2010 Archbishop Desmond Tutu released a letter through The Sunday Times, under the heading "Israeli ties: a chance to do the right thing", supporting the academics.
The Nobel Laureate's position in favour of the boycott was accompanied by an appeal that: "The University of Johannesburg has a chance to do the right thing, at a time when it is unsexy.
But the academic boycott resolution passed by the British professors union in the way that it singles out Israel is in my judgment anti-Semitic in both effect and in intent.