UCT boycott motion “being deferred to death”

TALI FEINBERG

The university’s senate, made up of about 300 academics and administrative staff, voted on 15 March to pass a motion that the university “would not enter into any formal relationships with Israeli academic institutions operating in the occupied Palestinian territories as well as other Israeli academic institutions enabling gross human rights violations in the occupied Palestinian territories”.

This decision was then sent on to the university’s highest governing body – its council – which was supposed to vote on it on Saturday, 30 March. But council secretary Royston Pillay said a number of issues required clarification before the resolution could go to a vote.

He therefore sent the resolution back to the senate, asking for “a full assessment of the sustainability impact” and said that a “more consultative process was necessary before the matter could be considered any further”.

The council also said it resolved to “condemn the atrocities and human-rights violations perpetrated in the occupied Palestinian territories, and elsewhere in the world” and affirmed “UCT’s commitment to academic freedom, but reserved the right to dissociate itself from academics and academic institutions that supported (directly or indirectly) the violation of human rights and/or enabled the violation of human rights”.

A senior academic at the university, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the council’s refusal to adopt the motion and the fact that it had sent it back to the senate for consideration, would most likely “defer it to death”.

“This is a way of ‘killing it’ without having to say so openly. This is especially true if the council does not provide very specific and limited guidance to direct the future debate in the senate.”

The academic said that the statement condemning human-rights violations was probably a “face-saving measure” following the deep opposition expressed by many council members to the motion.

The academic thinks the move to boycott Israel will now die down. “Essentially, it was ‘defeated’ in November (when the senate voted against the boycott but it was not ratified) and now ‘defeated’ by council. No one at the university administration wants this saga to continue, and many do not have the political will to push it further right now.”

A second academic, also speaking on condition of anonymity, said, “My feeling is that the council probably thought it would have been too radical to reject the senate-approved motion out of hand. So, it has asked the senate to reapply its mind and be more cognisant of the detrimental effects that an academic boycott could have on the university.”

He said that as a result of the attention given to the motion, the next senate meeting would probably be well-attended by those against the boycott (which might not have been the case at the last meeting), and this would help to defeat it.

“On the other hand, there is a lobby group that wants the boycott motion to succeed, and will do its utmost not to let it end.”

But the lack of clarity from the council led the Palestinian Solidarity Forum to claim a “significant victory” on Facebook. It said, “It is noteworthy that by council’s resolution, we have lost nothing, we have only gained and advanced – not as much as we had hoped, but we have advanced nonetheless! It is an important step towards UCT adopting the academic boycott of Israel. Zionism at UCT is weaker now because of this resolution. That, in itself, is worthy of celebration.”

Indeed, some are concerned that there is still the possibility of a boycott. “Although the council’s refusal to adopt the senate’s resolution means that academic freedom has lived to see another day, we also note with concern that UCT has once again failed to take a conclusive step towards protecting academic freedom at the university,” said Tami Jackson of Progress SA.

Her organisation has taken up the fight not because they are a Jewish or Zionist organisation, but because they want to open up the space for free speech and debate that has been closed off by radical student politics at UCT.

Jackson pointed out that the council’s comment that it reserved the right to dissociate itself from academics and academic institutions who directly or indirectly support the violation of human rights was a negative move.

“If UCT accepts the viability of this kind of authoritarian control in principle, we are left with a potentially absurd situation in which academics are not free to associate with anyone from a country whose institutions are suspected of ‘enabling’ human-rights abuses. This would include [according to Amnesty International] China, Venezuela, Syria, Saudi Arabia, Zimbabwe, Yemen, Turkey, Myanmar – to name but a few. UCT would not benefit from such isolation, and neither would the people of those individual countries,” she said.

“For more than two years, this matter has been tossed around in the senate and other bodies with no clear resolution. It not only reveals the lack of decisive and principled leadership at UCT, but the political apathy and self-censorship amongst academics.”

Another organisation, the Rule of Law Project, said that the motion to restrict interaction between UCT and Israeli academic institutions would be unconstitutional. The organisation has sought legal opinion on the subject to clarify what a publicly-funded university can do.

Meanwhile, the South African Jewish Board of Deputies (SAJBD) views the step taken by the UCT council as positive. “It endorsed the principles of academic freedom that underpin any credible global top ranking university. An attempt to boycott academic institutions in Israel, or indeed in any other country, would contravene outright these principles,” said SAJBD National Director Wendy Kahn.

“We look to the senate to further endorse and uphold these principles in its future deliberations. Any resolutions should reconfirm the university’s ethos and its commitment to fairness, justice, and non-racialism.”

The South African Zionist Federation’s Ben Swartz and Rowan Polovin also applauded the move, saying they welcomed the council’s decision to reject a motion that singled out the Jewish state for unique censure.

“We call on UCT to irrevocably reject this campaign of hate against Israel. We call on the university to show courage, dismiss the academic boycott campaign outright, and spend its precious time on other pressing issues relevant to South Africa and its student body,” they said.