Why I've resigned from the UCU (by Shalom Lappin)

The following is a reply from Professor Shalom Lappin to an email request from the UCU executive, asking him to reconsider his decision to resign.

Dear

Many thanks for your note, which I very much appreciate. In fact, the "debate" which you describe will be a UCU sponsored PACBI campaign throughout local branches to encourage backing for PACBI's boycott call. No comparable campaign by opponents of the boycott will be organized to provide any balance. This is, at best, a farcical notion of an open discussion, and I have no intention of contributing membership dues to support it. There have now been four boycott motions brought before the UCU and its predecessors, the AUT and NATFHE, in the past four years. Each time such a motion is defeated, overturned, or effectively cancelled by union policy, the boycott lobby re-introduces a variant of the proposal the following year. The result is an annual boycott pogrom that distracts attention from the pressing concerns of people working in the British university system. It creates massive divisions among the membership, and it generates prolonged turmoil that undermines the credibility of the union. The boycott is a disgraceful stain on the good name of the UCU. It attempts to impose a discriminatory sanction on Israeli academics that its advocates do not seek to apply to any other nation, even in situations of conflict where far greater human rights abuses are being committed. It in no way furthers the cause of peace and reconcilation between Israelis and Palestinians, nor is it intended as an instrument for changing Israeli government policy - a policy certainly worthy of criticism. Instead it is a crude effort to delegitimize Israel as a country and express hositility for its people. The executive of the union has been consistently passive and thoroughly uncommitted in opposing the boycott.

It has repeatedly failed to provide the necessary moral and political leadership on this issue. Its feeble performance in the face of the boycott lobby leads me to conclude that it simply does not grasp the full extent of the deep pathology that this campaign represents. I have no intention of repeating yet again arguments that have been made many times before to people who have no interest in listening to them. Neither I nor my colleagues opposed to the boycott have a case to make here. It is the boycott advocates who need to be made aware of the perverse nature of their conduct. That the union executive has played no role in doing this is a major factor in the boycott campaign's success. By contrast, many rank and file members have simply turned away either in disgust or indifference. In my view, matters have reached the point where the UCU is no longer an effective agent of industrial democracy or a credible representative of its members in the struggle for improved working conditions in the University sector. It has allowed itself to be infected by the raw prejudice of a small group of political extremists, who are using it to pursue an appalling agenda. In these circumstances I see no alternative but to withdraw from the union. I will work against the discrimination that the boycott campaign is attempting to promote in a more efficient way than by allowing myself to be placed in the defendant's dock by agents of bigotry in an endlessly recurring, stacked "debate" within the UCU. If the UCU ever frees itself from the malevolent grip of the boycott obsession which it has permitted to flourish in its midst and returns to its intended role as a genuine labour union, I will be delighted to return.

With best regards.

Shalom Lappin
Professor of Computational Linguistics
King's College, London