One of the best comebacks ever, dead and buried at half-time, “Champions of Europe….”:http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/football/europe/4573159.stm
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Chris Bertram
My dear former colleague Andrew Harrison died last Saturday after suffering a cruel illness for the last three years. Andrew was a wonderful teacher, a kind and generous man and a distinguished thinker in aesthetics. I’ve posted some words about him written by Michael Welbourne to philos-l which you can read “here”:http://listserv.liv.ac.uk/cgi-bin/wa?A2=ind0505&L=philos-l&F=&S=&P=18637 . I know that a number of former students read CT. If you are among them and would like to know about funeral arrangements please email me privately.
The AUT boycott was put before our local association today (for the motion I co-sponsored see “here”:https://crookedtimber.org/2005/05/09/questions-and-answers-re-the-aut-boycott/ — and scroll down). The debate was passionate but respectful. Everyone on both sides agreed that the AUT had botched things procedurally. The pro-boycott lobby didn’t address the details of the Haifa or Bar-Ilan cases at all but made a generic anti-Israel case centred around an analogy with apartheid. In the end the vote was decisive, a pro-boycott amendment was defeated by 41 votes to 18 and my anti-boycott motion passed by 40 votes to 16. Somewhat disappointingly, a number of people then left and a vote was taken that effectively commits the Bristol delegation to splitting their vote to reflect the proportions of opinion (rather than swinging all our votes at Council against the boycott). This adds Bristol to the list of associations that opposed the boycott.
The BBC radio news this morning has been dominated by hours of whining about “the takeover of Manchester United by a Michael Moore lookalike”:http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/4542913.stm . Meanwhile the disappearance of hundreds (and possibly thousands) of African children from London schools is relegated to mere mention status. (Some of the children have been killed, many more are probably in some kind of slavery.) The relative importance the BBC assigns to these stories is also reflected on its main news page.
Over at Left2Right, David Velleman “has posted in opposition”:http://left2right.typepad.com/main/2005/05/stating_the_obv.html to the AUT boycott. I’m largely in agreement with him, but in comments (and by email) he and Ralph Wedgwood ask a few questions. Since others less familiar to the UK university scene may want answers to the same ones, I’m posting them here. By the way, the current state of play is that AUT activists opposed to the boycott “have garnered the 25 signatures”:http://liberoblog.com/2005/05/04/aut-announce-special-council/ of Council members needed to trigger an emergency session of Council to reconsider the boycott, this will take place on the 26th of May. Below the fold I append the text of a resolution I’ve co-authored for my local association, which we’ll debate on the 18th.
What is the AUT? Do all university teachers belong to it? Are there other organizations representing university teachers, or is the AUT the only (or main) one?
The AUT is the main trade union representing university teachers (and librarians and other “academic-related” staff) in the “old” universities (i.e those that weren’t polytechnics pre-1992). It does have some membership also in those universities I believe. I’ve heard varying estimates of the proportion of eligible staff who belong to the AUT, it seems to be just under a third of academic and related staff at my own university. The other union, representing the same sort of people but in post-1992 universities, and in colleges of further education is NATFHE (National Association of Teachers in Further and Higher Education). This is much bigger than the AUT, there is a merger proposed, and, by the way, NATFHE currently has a more aggressive anti-Israel policy than the AUT. The policy of any merged union on this has yet to be determined.
Does the AUT tend to have a political affiliation or complexion? For example, does it tend to attract membership from left-leaning academics rather than others?
Not as such, though local meetings tend to attract a higher proportion of activists than are present in the general membership and, of course, left-wing people tend to attach more importance to being a member of a union.
How was the vote conducted? What was the turnout? Is this one of those cases in which a relatively small number of activists takes advantage of low turnout to push through a resolution?
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. The specific issue of the Israel boycott was not discussed or canvassed in most local associations in advance, the representatives mostly voted their own personal opinion without reference to the views of their members. (I have so far, despite efforts, been unable to get a reliable idea of how all our representatives voted.) The vote was narrow, and, allegedly due to time constraints, only one side of the argument was properly put before the motions were put to the vote.
Will British academics be bound by the AUT boycott? Are there sanctions for those who break the boycott?
No, they will not be bound. A key question here is whether local activists who try to implement the boycott will be disciplined by university management and whether the AUT will then try to defend them, and whether the AUT membership would be willing to act in their defence. I’m sceptical, given the AUT’s inability to secure collective action on basic questions of pay and employment over the years. I’m certain that those who don’t observe the boycott will face no negative consequences whatsoever.
I went to bed at 12.30 with things looking increasingly grim for Labour, and I’m surprised that when I got up just before 6 they’d improved considerably. The short version: Labour will win an unprecedented third term, but with a reduced majority of 60-something; the Liberal Democrats have made big gains in votes, but less so in seats (and have hurt Labour); and the Tories’ negative campaign has won them some seats but no increased popularity. Oh, and George Galloway ousted Oona King. But you could get all this just by “reading the BBC”:http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/vote_2005/default.stm .
Nearly a week has passed since I endured the finale of Phyllida Lloyd’s Ring for the “English National Opera”:http://www.eno.org/home/index.php . I wrote up earlier episodes on CT, so I ought to complete the job. Kathleen Broderick was just amazingly good as Brunnhilde and the orchestra — under the direction of Paul Daniels — played very well. But producer Phyllida Lloyd should be shot, or worse.
Wagnerphobes are going to be mystified at the complaint that a production of the Ring was silly. “Isn’t it always?” Kieran might say. Well, up to a point. This production of Twilight of the Gods was really very silly indeed, but also trite, one-dimensional, incoherent and offensive. I have no objection to modern dress productions of opera or Shakespeare, to radical changes of location or period. That’s fine. If a producer can give us a new insight into a work of art, or make it come alive for a modern audience, that is ok by me. But this wasn’t anything like that.
It was gratuitous and exploitative. (This was signalled before the performance even started by the programme, which contained photographs of the Twin Towers burning, a severed hand amidst post-Tsunami debris, and cows being burnt in Britain’s last episode of foot-and-mouth disease.) The culmination of this urge to grab hold of any random news image or bit of popular culture for shock value was the portrayal of Brunnhilde as a suicide bomber in Act 3. In between we were treated to Siegfried as rhinestone cowboy and Brunnhilde as Judy Garland (opening of Act 1) and Hagen as game-show host (wedding in Act 2). Why does Judy Garland metamorphose into a Palestinian suicide bomber?! I have absolutely no idea.
Utter crap.
“Good 1 — Evil 0”:http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/football/europe/4501277.stm
Along with colleagues at Bristol I’ve been busy organising opposition to the AUT boycott, drafting motions, collecting signatures and so on. And I’ve been preparing myself mentally for our local association AGM on the 18th of May, since I’ll have to stand up and argue the case against the boycott. There’s bound to be a range of views on the other side: some will be anti-Israel obsessives but I suspect others will be more moderate. The component of the boycott that is going to have the most support is that of Bar-Ilan University, because of its ties to Judaea and Samaria College which is located in a Jewish settlement in the occupied territories. So what has Ariel Sharon done? He’s pushed a decision through the Israeli cabinet (against Labour opposition) “to upgrade this college”:http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/571290.html to full university status! I don’t know enough about Israeli politics to be able to “read” this with any degree of confidence, but it sure looks like a move calculated to undermine moderate opponents of the boycott. Perhaps an AUT that can be represented to Israelis as resolutely anti-semitic (and therefore emblematic of a general European disease) is more useful to Sharon than one which renounces the boycott? David Hirsh at Engage (the anti-boycott blog) “has more”:http://liberoblog.com/2005/05/02/ariel-sharon-asks-the-boycotters-to-dance/ .
Like other Timberites I pledged my Amazon Associates earnings to Tsunami relief. However in the intervening period the “Disasters Emergency Committee”:http://www.dec.org.uk/ have decided that Darfur is more of a priority and the button that previously went to Tsunami relief redirects to a page inviting you to donate to that cause. Unlike John H., my earnings were small, but I’ve sent £40 to the DEC today and will do the same with all future earnings.
Fully searchable “Google Print is now out”:http://print.google.com/print?q=foo and there’s lots of valuable stuff. A fantastic resource!
Moves are afoot to get the AUT decision for a partial boycott of Israeli institutions reversed, and for local associations — including my own — to repudiate and refuse to implement the national decision. So far, I haven’t met a single British academic who will admit to supporting the decision which was passed by a very narrow majority after a rushed and unsatisfactory debate by delegates who had mostly failed to discuss the issues with their colleagues in universities across the country. Sadly, but understandably, their vote has been interpreted as being indicative of the attitudes of British university teachers. I hope that impression can be correctly quickly. Meanwhile, a blog called “Engage”:http://www.liberoblog.com/ has been started around the campaign to reverse the decision.
I was very pleased to get a copy of Nicholas Dent’s new “Rousseau“:http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/0415283507/junius-21 in the post today. It appears in the Routledge Philosophers series edited by Brian Leiter. There’s an endorsement from yours truly on the cover, saying that is is “The best general introduction to Rousseau’s life and thought in English…” I think that’s true. Highly recommended.
I see that “George” in the comments to Daniel’s post immediately below is contending, in a manner similar to that of various pro-war British bloggers, that Blair’s decision to go to war with Iraq was overdetermined. The claim is that, although WMD provided a sufficient reason to go to war, there were other “planks” to the case, also sufficient reasons, that were advanced at the time and which provided an independent case for the decision. We need to be careful here. There’s no doubt that the blogospheric supporters of the decision to go to war believed then and believe still that the nature of Saddam’s regime was such that it should have been removed. There are certainly Parliamentarians, such as Anne Clwyd, who took such a line. Indeed, there’s some merit in such a view though it needs to be balanced against a realistic assessment of the costs and risks of war. But it was not Blair’s view at the time. Blair stated clearly that the horrible nature of the Baathist regime would not be sufficient to justify the war and that Saddam’s regime could continue if he satisfied the UN on the WMD question. The money quotes:
bq. I detest his regime. But even now he can save it by complying with the UN’s demand. Even now, we are prepared to go the extra step to achieve disarmament peacefully.
and
bq. it takes no time at all for Saddam to co-operate. It just takes a fundamental change of heart and mind. Today the path to peace is clear. Saddam can co-operate fully with the inspectors. He can voluntarily disarm. He can even leave the country peacefully. But he cannot avoid disarmament. One further point. The purpose in our acting is disarmament. But the nature of Saddam’s regime is relevant in two ways. First, WMD in the hands of a regime of this brutality is especially dangerous because Saddam has shown he will use them. Secondly, I know the innocent as well as the guilty die in a war. But do not let us forget the 4 million Iraqi exiles, the thousands of children who die needlessly every year due to Saddam’s impoverishment of his country – a country which in 1978 was wealthier than Portugal or Malaysia but now is in ruins, 60 per cent of its people on food aid. Let us not forget the tens of thousands imprisoned, tortured or executed by his barbarity every year. The innocent die every day in Iraq victims of Saddam, and their plight too should be heard. [Emphases added]
Clearly, in the passage above, Blair is offering the ghastly nature of the Saddam regime not as an independent justification for war but as a reason to given additional weight and urgency to the WMD case. People should not retrospectively pretend otherwise.
The Association of University Teachers — the main UK union for university teachers, librarians, computer technicians etc — has “voted at its Council to boycott Haifa and Bar-Ilan universities”:http://www.aut.org.uk/index.cfm?articleid=1201 and the boycott may be extended to the Hebrew University of Jerusalem also. I think this is a big mistake and will not do anything to help the cause of Palestinian statehood. Critics — and Daily Mail columnists — will seize on this decision and claim that it demonstrates that British academics are obsessively anti-Israeli (and possibly anti-semitic). The truth is that the AUT is not particularly representative, that aforementioned librarians and computer technicians often play more of a role than academics, that poor attendance at union meetings means that single-issue activists find it easy to push through resolutions on political topics, etc. Will anyone pay any attention to the boycott? A few, perhaps. But most British academics will continue to work with Israeli academics as before.