UCU has driven away another member, one of the most articulate and vocal protesters against the campaign to boycott Israeli academics. Her letter of resignation is on Normblog.

"In spite of my longstanding commitment to Union membership, the recent actions of the UCU are finally driving me out of it. I find that I cannot remain in an institution which sets out to discriminate against its Jewish members.

The passing of Motion 25 at the June Congress is the central, though by no means the only, example of this discrimination. It was clear to anyone who watched the vote take place that the Union delegates, and the National Executive, were determined to punish Israel. They felt that it was not sufficient for them to criticise it - as was, in their view, appropriate for countries like Sudan, Burma and Zimbabwe. Nothing but punishment would do for the Jewish state, and hence it, and it alone, must be the target of a boycott motion.
...

The primary impact of Motion 25, as with previous boycott motions, will not be to harm Israel, whose academics will simply transfer their valuable contributions to other, less prejudiced, collaborators. Nor will it have any discernible impact on Palestinians, except perhaps a negative one. The discriminatory procedure which the motion mandates will certainly discredit UK academia. But its principal impact will be on British Jews and Jewish academics. Most, though not all, Jews in the UK, and most Jewish academics, support the existence of Israel, and are extremely concerned that it has been singled out for hostile treatment in this way. Most of them feel that the palpable hostility to Israel and its supporters displayed by the pro-boycotters is based on an astonishingly one-sided, partial, and often quite false account of the troubled history of the Middle East; and that the principal effect, and quite possibly the principal aim, of the boycott project is to demonise and delegitimise Jewish national identity and self-determination. Most Jewish academics feel that Jews have as much right to self-determination and national aspirations as any other people, and that the UCU has become a place where such rights are being dismissed and denied. They increasingly feel that the Union is no longer a place where they can be as much at home as any other members, and that its increasingly chilling attitude to Jewish self-determination is creating an unwelcoming and even hostile environment for people with their political sympathies. And the Executive of the Union has made no attempt whatever to address such concerns. It has treated the worries and fears of its Jewish members with contemptuous neglect."

Read the whole of Eve's resignation letter on Normblog.

What Eve refers to as the union's "peevish and self-satisfied response to criticism from the All-Party Inquiry into Anti-Semitism" can be read here alongside Engage's critique of UCU's response.

Read Engage's protest at what Eve refers to as "the Union's flat refusal to meet the OSCE Special Representative on combating anti-Semitism", Gert Weisskirchen, here.

See Jon Pike's concern about union resignations and breaches of anti-discrimination law here.

See Michael Yudkin's discussion of union resignations here.

Read Shalom Lappin's 2007 letter of resignation here.

Dov Stekel has not resigned from UCU but says: "... this is the only organization with which I have been involved in which I have been made to feel uncomfortable as a Jew..." here.

Mira Vogel looks at UCU's anti-bullying policy here.

Why does UCU imply that people who are concerned about antisemitism are in fact voicing such concern in bad faith in order to try to de-legitimize criticism of Israeli human rights abuses? Click here for Norman Geras and here for David Hirsh.

Click here for Antony Julius' legal account of UCU's refusal to take the issue of antisemitism seriously.

Click here for the legal advice given to the 'stop the boycott' campaign on UCU's problem with institutional antisemitism.

Robert Fine on UCU Congress 2008: "The tones are mellow but they give me a shiver and make me feel my Jewishness in a new way." here.