The motion was only passed (I assume) because of the “non-debate” and the fact that LAs hadn’t (it seems) circulated it to their members. I’ve only been in 2 AUT LAs. One never circulated Council details (but that will have changed), the other always did. Shouldn’t people be trying to get their LA execs to circulate as much information before Council as they can?

BTW, I doubt the AUT will support anyone who tries to implement the boycott before the special Council, as Sally Hunt immediately issued a statement advising members not to implement it pending a check on contractual implications (which as AUT members’ contracts vary so widely, would take some while…).

I’m not sure how you got that from what I wrote.

I’m glad to say that none of the various people with whom the text was discussed in advance felt themselves slighted by that formulation. Perhaps only people in the habit of leaving intemperate and extreme comments on blogs would take it that way.

What’s more likely is that British academic environments are much more hostile to Israel than the ones with which I’m familiar in the US.

If the boycott is in fact overturned, Blackwell will claim a victory in having further “opened up the discussion” about Israel’s legitimacy – and she won’t be entirely wrong.

I’m glad to say that none of the various people with whom the text was discussed in advance felt themselves slighted by that formulation. Perhaps only people in the habit of leaving intemperate and extreme comments on blogs would take it that way.

Saying what is said is actually likely to make people feel that their “commitments” have been slighted. I find it disturbing that in the course of defending Israel from some horribly unfair treatment you are putting the legitimacy of “Zionism” into question (ie. treating it as a casually debatable issue) and thus seeming to concede something to Blackwell.

We take no view here for or against Zionism.

So we don’t address the content of anyone’s views. The reason for saying what we do say is that it is bad politics to trample on the commitments of an important section of the membership unless there is a really compelling moral case for so-doing. No such case has been demonstrated.

I actually agree w/ abb1 on this.

The AUT boycott is ostensibly about certain policies of Israeli universities. Blackwell & co. are almost certainly motivated by a fervent “anti-zionism”, but there’s no need to address their wacky conspiratorial views since it’s not at all relevant to the AUT resolution.

By including it into your motion you’re only encouraging demagogues, seems to me. The Engage thing is even worse in this respect.

The vote was conducted at the annual AUT Council, its sovereign body. Each local association sends one representative per 150 members, and I think there were about 200 representatives in all.

188 people voted for or against the boycott at the council meeting. So I imagine you’re right that there were about 200 representatives at that meeting, since there probably weren’t many abstentions. It might be worth mentioning, however, that the total number of elected representatives is around 300 (which is the number one gets when one divides the overall membership of roughly 48,700 by the figure of 150 members per council representative and then adjusts for the fact that local associations need to send whole numbers of representatives).