When news of an apparent academic boycott of Israeli universities by the British University and College Union (UCU) spread across the Internet earlier this summer, Penn State President Graham Spanier was one of the first eight university and college presidents to speak out against it.
However, a UCU spokesman stated repeatedly yesterday that there was no such boycott being called by the group and called reports about the boycott "wildly inaccurate, especially in the States."
The Collegian is withholding the spokesman's name as a safety precaution because police advised him not to give his name because of recent threats.
According to the UCU Web site, there has been a call by several Palestinian groups for a boycott of Israeli academic institutions, but the only role of the UCU is to "seek to ensure a fair and even-handed debate" between Israel and Palestine.
The UCU spokesman said individuals in the UCU do have varying opinions about a boycott.
Spanier said the information he read "some time ago" stated that the UCU was boycotting Israeli universities. He said the information was being circulated on the Internet between Nobel laureates and Jewish scholars.
"It looks like [the UCU's] most recent writing is that they want to ensure an even-handed debate, but that's not what I recall reading originally," Spanier said after reading through the UCU resolution. "My recollection was this organization, the UCU, passed that resolution [to boycott], and now we're hearing it has to come to some larger body, some congress, for debate."
The spokesman said members of the UCU will hold a series of debates this fall about a possible boycott, but said: "Just to be clear, there is no boycott, and after the debates, there won't be a boycott."
Many people have told the UCU to cancel the debates on the basis of academic freedom, but he said holding the debates is expressing academic freedom.
After increased publicity about the apparent academic boycott, more than 200 university and college presidents, including Spanier, signed a full-page advertisement to be run in the New York Times denouncing the apparent boycott.
The New York Times advertisement, written by Columbia University President Lee Bollinger, ran on Aug. 8 under the title, "Boycott Israeli Universities? Boycott Ours, Too!"
"I think it's very important that academics, when they have the opportunity, speak out on behalf of academic freedom," Spanier said. "[The UCU] took a political question and turned it into academic policy ... and that is something that violates academic freedom and, of course, free speech."
Spanier said any call for a boycott of an academic institution is misguided and a violation of academic freedom.
In the advertisement, paid for by the American Jewish Community (AJC), Bollinger wrote that Columbia embraces "scholars from many countries regardless of divergent views on their government's policies."
He added that "if the British UCU is intent on pursuing its deeply misguided policy, then it should add Columbia to its boycott list, for we do not intend to draw distinctions between our mission and that of the universities you are seeking to punish."
The AJC Web Site currently reports that 286 university and college presidents have signed the advertisement.
"We've had a uniformly positive response," said Ben Cohen, associate director of the department dealing with anti-Semitism and extremism at the AJC. "In the few days since the ad was run, nearly 40 more university presidents endorsed it."
According to the text of the Palestinian Boycott Call, many Palestinian organizations endorsed a boycott of academic institutions in Israel because of the nation's "military occupation and colonization of the West Bank," "racial discrimination and segregation against the Palestinian citizens of Israel" and "denial of its responsibility for the Nakba ... that created the Palestinian refugee problem."
Aaron Kaufman, director of Jewish student life for Penn State Hillel, said he found it hard to believe that so many news organizations were all wrong, but added that it may be possible that the UCU has changed its position in response to the outcry against it.
"There's been a ton of press about there being a boycott," Kaufman said. "If they're changing their position, I think that's good."
