Priyamvada Gopal has a piece in today's Guardian on the supposed silencing of free speech. Whose free speech? Those in the University and College Union wanting to debate a boycott of Israeli academics. Gopal's article is a pitiable exercise in tendentiousness. It demonstrates yet once more that training in the disciplines of scholarship is no guarantee of being able to notice a plain fact or recognize a distinction.
Some days after it was made clear what the legal advice to UCU was, Gopal proceeds as if nothing were known about it. For the legal advice wasn't against debating a boycott, but against seeking to implement one. But what's the difference? Go on as if it were otherwise. According to Gopal, this is an 'appalling attempt to undermine that most fundamental intellectual value - free debate'. She seems not to feel bound by the requirement of accuracy to what is happening in the world around her. Thus she speaks also of there being 'two unbreachable taboos: anti-Americanism, and criticism of the Israeli state and its occupation of Palestine'. Taboos? So far from being a taboo, criticism of the Israeli state is one of the most popular pastimes there is, particularly in the 'progressive' milieu Gopal may be assumed to inhabit, and anti-Americanism isn't exactly scarce there either. But go pal, anyway - she can write this in the Guardian, one of the principal contemporary conduits for both themes.
'Writers and intellectuals', Gopal says, 'have a moral obligation to criticise violations of human rights and freedom wherever they occur'. Yes, but they are under no obligation to countenance an attempt at acting punitively against the academics of one country, and one country only - the majority of its inhabitants Jews. For this attempt Ms Gopal is unable to find any anger.