There’s an interesting editorial in the latest THE (formerly known as the Times Higher Educational Supplement). Ann Mroz describes the many challenges facing the University and College Union in the current climate, and warns against the union’s fondness for ‘grandstanding in pursuit of impossible political goals’:
The most notable example is the obsession with Israel. In the past, members at the UCU annual congress have supported resolutions calling for an academic boycott of Israel, which have been dismissed as illegal by the union on legal advice; this year, members voted to reject the European Union Monitoring Centre on Racism and Xenophobia’s working definition of anti-Semitism. None of this has persuaded Israel to withdraw to its pre-1967 borders.
What it has done is create negative publicity for the UCU, here and around the world, and cause the resignation from the union of dozens of Jewish and non-Jewish members in protest. A recent swipe came from Nick Cohen in The Jewish Chronicle, who wrote that “[the union] – which represents intellectuals and so, inevitably, is the dumbest and nastiest organisation on the Left – refuses to accept any definition of anti-Semitism for fear that defining prejudice would restrict its attacks on Israel”.
You can read the whole piece here. Now many – most in my own experience – UCU members and officers really are focused on pay and conditions. But Ann Mroz is quite right to draw attention to the way the union has allowed itself to be distracted by divisive posturing.
