The hostile environment of British universities

This is one of the best exposes of the continued sinister and McCarthyist attempts by the British universities' union to boycott Israeli academics:

http://normblog.typepad.com/normblog/2008/05/living-in-a-hostile-environment-by-shalom-lappin.html

As a member of the Israel Translators Association, I find it very sad indeed that people like me are presumably being targetted by this boycott. I must have undertaken about 25 different translations from Hebrew, French and German to English in the last year and a half. Many of these for Israeli universities, including Haifa, Tel Aviv, Bar Ilan and the Israeli Academy of Sciences and Humanities. The latest translation deals with the way the right and the left perceive each other in Israel. And also tackles the rights of minority groups head on. Can you imagine this sort of research being conducted in Saudi Arabia, or Syria, for instance, let alone in Gaza?

So why are Israelis being targetted? It would need a psychiatrist to answer that one. The 'oldest hatred' indeed.

Comments

[emanuel-appel]

Dear Dr. Irene

It was interesting to read a first hand account of indifference and discrimination in the academic world. The question is what effective recourse is there?

The answer is very little because the people involved, be they administrators or colleagues, hate your guts. That is reality as it was in 1938. The only thing that might be effective is a counter boycott from American Jewish academics and lots of publicity.