Why the British Academic Boycott is Bollocks

With summer slowly fading, it's only a matter time before British academics return to their ivory towers where some of them will carry on with the task of making the world a dumber place. In particular, the growing movement by delegates of Britain's university teachers' union to launch an academic boycott of Israel represents a step backwards in the spread of enlightened thinking.

Proponents of the boycott -- which among other things would encourage UK universities to ban visits by Israeli academics to Britain and visits by British academics to Israeli universities -- see it as a way of forcing Israel to end its 40-year occupation of Palestinian territories. Their hope is that the academic boycott leads to a wider campaign of divestment and and sanctions much like that international campaign against South Africa in the 1980's. Opponents, say that Israel in no way resembles South Africa's apartheid regime, and that the campaign against smacks of anti-semitism.

But another reason not to boycott Israel is that it's counterproductive. Higher education and business are easy targets for boycotts because they are among the most globalized parts of our culture that depend on free movement and free markets. But that's precisely why these two fields have the most potential to bring rogue actors back into the fold of international norms. Israeli academics are disproportionately among the constituencies in Israel most eager to make peace, just as Israeli business leaders are among the most eager for their government to confront the settler movement and Israel's hard-liners.

Some critics of the British academic boycott are proposing equally counterproductive tactics. Harvard Law School professor Alan Dershowitz has organized a petition signed by some 10,000 American academics who have volunteered to boycott British universities if the British union goes through with the boycott proposal. But if British academics are behaving badly, then isn't it the role of American academics -- as educators -- to engage and enlighten them? Both groups are displaying how little faith they have in their own professions.

But the real irony of the movement to boycott Israel is how it resembles the attempt by American hard-liners to isolate certain countries in the Middle East such as Iran and Syria. In these counties, sanctions and international opprobrium have often ended up weakening moderates while die hard regime supporters consolidate power under siege.

Not that Syria and Iran and Israel and the Palestinians and their ongoing disputes and violent actions don't pose real threats to their neighbors. But it's very difficult to change the behavior of other nations, just as it's difficult to change the behavior of other people. These are the lessons of America's failed social welfare policies of our liberal era, and of our failed regime-change policies now. Building a more prosperous and humane world is a long slow process of building trust and mutually beneficial partnerships. Something universities and businesses are very good at doing.

--Andrew Lee Butters/Beirut