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John R Bradley

ByJohn R Bradley, John R Bradley

Opinion

Saudi cash and the rank hypocrisy of the academic boycotters

November 5, 2015 11:02
Oxford’s Centre for Islamic Studies, paid for by theocratic Saudi Arabia
4 min read

Another academic year begins, and yet another academic boycott of Israel is launched to great fanfare by a tiny but loud group of mostly obscure British university lecturers.

Their cause is generating enormous publicity and reaction, despite the fact that the launch of just about any other such boycott on a similar scale would fail to make headlines even in the local free newspaper.

The reason this one has stirred great interest is that its backers paid a small fortune (which surely would have been more ethically donated to a charity educating disadvantaged Palestinian children) to place a full-page advertisement in the Guardian.

It announced that some 300 academics have pledged to refuse to act as referees in activities related to Israeli academic institutions, eschew all co-operation with Israeli universities and reject all invitations for academic visits to Israel. However, their boycott will not, they reassure us, extend to Israeli colleagues working in their individual capacities.