Yesterday was a good day for the Association of University Teachers. It did the right thing in decisively seeing off the proposed blacklist of Israeli academics. Engage has a roundup of press report links.
See also the AUT statement, and this post at Eric Lee about the role of the Internet in the controversy:
The moment the debate was publicized on the Internet, it was globalized...First business after applauding the actual result is to congratulate Jon Pike, Dave Hirsh and everybody else at Engage for their extraordinary and unflagging effort, and the sharp-eyed intelligence that has informed it from beginning to end. The rest of us owe them a great debt of thanks.It used to be the case that an internal debate by a national trade union remained that - internal and national. No longer. The new communications technologies have erased old boundaries, and the intervention of a union in the United States in an internal union debate here in Britain now seems entirely natural and normal.
Second, I'd like to draw attention to, and echo, this call by Shalom Lappin for members who left the union to rejoin it.
Finally, in view of the cynical disregard for, or failure to understand, elementary principles of democracy on the part of some of the supporters of the boycott - as in: 'If the people who come to the council are the usual people, who are dedicated unionists who care about the issue, we could win. If we find the meeting is packed with people who are opposing the boycott [and who presumably don't care - NG], we may struggle' - it is hard not to draw some independent, some extra, satisfaction at their defeat.