Boycotting Israel — UCT’s decision should balance moral outrage with long-term costs to the university
This was not the first time that motions to condemn or boycott Israel had been served before Senate. In 2019, Senate did in fact pass a limited boycott motion, which was later that year rescinded by Senate, after Council had declined to support the motion, choosing instead to refer it back to Senate while simultaneously engaging in a review of the possible consequences of such a boycott for the university.
One might hope that a room filled mostly with professors would anticipate that a small university cannot affect a war in another country, and that… it would be foolhardy to embrace the possibility of such a boycott, until the consequences of doing so were known Those consequences include the likely cancellation of a recently awarded R200-million grant. Yet raising this as an objection is where misguided – and anti-Semitic – assertions about the role of money and who wields financial power begin.
Academic staff at universities help save lives; rebuild communities; repair dysfunctional systems of various sorts; and invent or innovate to assist our environment and all the creatures on it. That is their task, and also, what unites them as members of a senate or similar body. Acknowledging and committing to that role does not suggest that other causes are not worthy of outrage or action.