3 UK Universities defy boycott

Let's hope this is a trend.

The faculties of Oxford, Warwick and Sussex universities faculty has rejected he boycott of Haifa and Bar Ilan universities by Britain's Association of University Teachers, reported Israel Radio on Friday morning.

The decision by Oxford faculty to reject the boycott came in advance of the proposed May 26 emergency meeting at which it was expected that the anti-boycott faction would try to overturn the boycott. A source told The Jerusalem Post that the AUT accepted a letter with the required 25 signatures submitted by John Pike of the Open University, calling for the special session, and for a "comprehensive debate of the issue."

The controversial boycott recently came under fire, not just by pro-Israel groups, but also by British university lecturers and professors.

The first academics to resign from the AUT, Shalom Lappin and Jonathan Ginzburg, circulated an open letter calling on members to join them in breaking away from the union in protest of the boycott. "For the past several years an ugly campaign of anti-Jewish provocation has been building on the margins of the Israel hate-fest that the boycott supporters have been promoting on campuses throughout the UK," they said in the letter. "There comes a time when an organization discredits itself to the point that it can no longer be taken to stand for the values that it purports to represent. When this point is reached, one has no alternative but to disassociate oneself from it."