Yesterday it was made clear by UCU that if discussion on the issue of the boycott campaign on the UCU activist email list was made public, then those who made it public would be excluded from further discussion. Jon Pike asked Engage to reproduce his email to the UCU activist list. Engage will protect the identity of the person to whom he is responding - DH

I'm glad you raise the case of Sawsan Salameh. It does highlight some of the difficulties both in Israel/Palestine, and in the current situation within the union.

1) I raised the case on the activists list last October (15th). I circulated details of the case, and asked people to send letters, and to raise the issue. I gave the website address of Gisha, the Israel human rights body, which was taking the case to the Israeli High Court. I asked that the joint secretaries and joint presidents make a statement of our condemnation of the refusal to let her take up her place at HUJ.

2) I got one reply, (from Josh Robinson). I don't know whether anyone else on this list did anything about the case - if so, they didn't copy me in - and as far as I know, no-one from the leadership made any sort of statement on our collective behalf.

3) Engage protested against the ban on Salameh, and organised a writing campaign. We met up with Gisha, and tried to coordinate a response. Shalom Lappin, a long term Israeli leftist and peace campaigner, wrote a particularly effective open letter to Tamir. (Shalom has, I'm afraid, now been driven out of the UCU). Yuli Tamir opposed the ban in the Israeli cabinet. The case is still in the high court.

4) The heads of all but one of the Israeli Universities came out against the ban - because there are many Israeli academics who do not support their Governments' policies .

5) But the vast majority of the activists, and the leadership of the UCU did - as far as I can tell, and I could be wrong - nothing.

Why? There are, perhaps, several reasons.

i) It's probably narrowly rational for the leadership of the union to run a mile from making public statements about Israeli academic life - and it probably has been for the last few years, because of the high profile disputes about the boycott. It's probably best just to keep quiet.

ii) Perhaps unconsciously, people think that letter writing campaigns can be a bit tedious. Certainly, they're not like having a huge row at Congress, and getting yourself all over the papers.

iii) If Israel is the only illegitimate state in the world - a monolithic, apartheid, theocracy - then there's no point in protesting about particular policies. There's no point in worrying about the details of academic freedom either - these don't, strictly speaking, matter. On this line of argument, the UCU should have an Israel-eliminationist position and all the rest is just pussy-footing around. The actual case, the High court process, Gisha, the Israeli academics who protest – all these are irrelevant.

iv) (This is, I think the most important reason). In order to protest about something we need to say more than that it is wrong: we have to say why it is wrong, and we have to carry some conviction. The exclusion of Sawsan Salameh from Hebrew University Jerusalem is wrong because it is wrong to exclude people from education, from teaching and research, simply on the basis of their nationality.

But that's not an argument available to some activists in the UCU, and it's not an argument that we can make, collectively, seriously, in public. So our ability to make even the most straightforward public statements, or organise the most minimal campaigns in defence of Palestinian academic freedom has, in this case, become embroiled in, damaged and diminished by, the boycott dispute.

All the best

Jon