The invitee knew so little about the people he was speaking to that he told them that they couldn’t possibly comprehend the discrimination faced by the black community!

— First, what use is a superior morality if nobody but you knows you possess it?

— Second, since most boycotters are second-rate academics (perhaps because first-rate ones put scholarship and research before politics?), an undeclared boycott is likely to hurt no one as much as the boycotter. The would-be victim will find other collaborators, and nobody will lose much sleep over what the world might have lost. Top tier academics, who actually create reputations for their institutions and for the endeavour of learning, will keep on doing what they do with whoever can best help them do it. Academic progress will continue and boycotters will be left behind.

To be really satisfying and to achieve anything at all, a boycott must not only be done, it must be seen to be done.

also see http://www.google.com/hostednews/ukpress/article/ALeqM5jbeer5zYU7cIj_DlI9h7byJuyrSw

Brian, I can’t dig out the study now, but I know that you’ll understand this: the media have tended to present the two ’sides’ of the climate change debate as if they were equivalent or equally valid.

Also read George Monbiot from earlier this month rounding up some evidence and statistics on the surge in denial (and look! he’s not boycotting Israeli academics):

http://www.monbiot.com/archives/2009/11/02/death-denial

“One such is the critic Clive James. You could accuse him of purveying trite received wisdom, but not of being dumb. On Radio Four a few days ago he delivered an essay about the importance of scepticism, during which he maintained that “the number of scientists who voice scepticism [about climate change] has lately been increasing.”(6) He presented no evidence to support this statement and, as far as I can tell, none exists. But he used this contention to argue that “either side might well be right, but I think that if you have a division on that scale, you can’t call it a consensus. Nobody can meaningfully say that the science is in.”

Had he bothered to take a look at the quality of the evidence on either side of this media debate, and the nature of the opposing armies – climate scientists on one side, rightwing bloggers on the other – he too might have realised that the science is in. In, at any rate, to the extent that science can ever be, which is to say that the evidence for manmade global warming is as strong as the evidence for Darwinian evolution, or for the link between smoking and lung cancer. I am constantly struck by the way in which people like James, who proclaim themselves sceptics, will believe any old claptrap that suits their views. Their position was perfectly summarised by a supporter of Ian Plimer (author of a marvellous concatenation of gibberish called Heaven and Earth(7)) commenting on a recent article in the Spectator. “Whether Plimer is a charlatan or not, he speaks for many of us”(8). These people aren’t sceptics; they’re suckers.”

I like Clive James. Times like this I remind myself: people are never always right or always wrong.

Then I posted another:

Here’s a study Brian – not the one I wanted to show you on manufactured controversy, but another:
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/306/5702/1686

“Politicians, economists, journalists, and others may have the impression of confusion, disagreement, or discord among climate scientists, but that impression is incorrect.”

Since then (2004) the scientific evidence for anthropogenic climate change has strengthened.

“If a non-member of the Green Party may be permitted a comment here, it is not only the non-scientists and those in the UK who are prepared to deny “anthropegenic climate change…”. In _the_ major US science fiction magazine, Analog, one of its regular bi-monthly science commenters, a US physicist, had a column two months back which used some legitimate doubts about US (automatic and unmanned) climate stations to query the whole argument about climate change, never mind the “anthropogenic” part of it. Thus, out of the window goes the melting of the arctic ice-cap and the Greenland ice shield, etc and so forth.

How can we expect laypeople to take climate change on board when natural scientists reject the scientific evidence.

Sorry, but I reserve comments on Holocaust denial for another place.”

Of course, _this_ is that “other place”. Mira’s use of the letter writer’s comment about feeling themself to be somewhere between a flat earthist and a Holocaust denier as a heading to the posting is entirely apt. Both groups deny evidence, despite the overwhelming nature of that evidence and the fact that, as far as the latter group is concerned, the perpertrators left the evidence behind them, thanks to their meticulous record-keeping.

Not that overwhelming evidence ever convinced anyone determined to disbelieve it: just like in their favourite conspiracy theory, “that’s what _they_ want you to believe”.

Funny that, but the conspiracy theorists rarely identify who the “they” are.

Such an individual boycott against Israelis and only Israelis (or any other ethnic or religious group) is, by definition, racist, and will run up against the law in the UK and the US: that one is an individual is no excuse, as the Oxford academic who refused a qualified Israeli ex-army applicant for a Doctoral programme found out to his cost. No amount of weasel words by Rose or anyone else will get round this, however “individual” the boycott is.

However, refusal to work with _some_ individuals from a country, but not others from the same country, will be difficult to tag, in legal terms, as racist, especially if whatever criteria are used can be shown to be universal. Thus, if I were qualified in the field (which I most decidedly am not) and looking for research partners, I sure wouldn’t want to work with either Ilan Pappe or Avi Shlaim, but I’d be more than willing to work with, eg, Benny Morris.

Yes, and when they do that (blow their horns on it, as it were, like the Oxford prof (?) who sent that one email to a prospective student), they’re in breach of law. And with that they should receive no enablement form union or university. Indeed, the university could and should discipline, even terminate, the violator (even if tenured) to better indemnify the institution. Otherwise, the trouble is when you have “silent” boycotts, without a smoking gun or do some stupid thing (uh… like Hickey’s letter), any governing body has to link intent with act for any legal action . And when there isn’t any, you just have to be patient for the actual motives to out themselves, they almost always do (uh again… like the Hickey letter).

Good thing Hickey and the boycotters are too clever by half and showed their hand a little too clearly for their lawyers comfort, eh? You gotta go to college to do something that dumb.

Yes, but they still shout be permitted to do so. It’s just that their relevent institutions should also be permitted to with-hold access for them to services/benefits which come from being in those institutions.

Unless, that is, we don’t expect power to actually speak back now and again.

But, of course, refusing to work with someone because of their nationality and nothing else, is racist whether done individually and quietly or in a herd and noisily.

After all, racism thrives in silence and, in so doing, thinks it can remain immune to the public light of anti-racist equality and justice.