AUT ISRAEL-BOYCOTT UPDATE: A few new items. Encouragingly, there is an attempt within the AUT to get the boycott decision overturned before it does them any more damage. The Guardian reports:

Academics opposed to Israeli boycott try to overturn ban

Matthew Taylor and Polly Curtis
Thursday April 28, 2005
The Guardian

Academics opposed to the controversial boycott of two Israeli universities are trying to overturn the decision before it has time to make an impact.

Members of the Association of University Teachers narrowly voted last week to sever links with Israeli academia which it claimed was complicit in the abuse of Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza.

The decision led to an angry backlash from both Israeli and non-Israeli groups in the UK and around the world.

Union members who opposed the decision are calling for a special AUT council in the next month to overturn the decision. The campaign is being run by Jon Pike, a philosopher at the Open University, who needs 25 signatures to invoke union rules and secure a fresh debate.

[...]

I bet they'll get a lot more than 25 signatures.

[UPDATE: It's 25 signatures of council members they need. Nevertheless, I doubt there will be any trouble getting them.]

Alan Dershowitz, law professor at Harvard University, has a scathing editorial in the National Post (Canada):

From Britain, with bigotry

Alan M. Dershowitz
National Post

The British Association of University Teachers has now created a blacklist against Jewish Israeli academics -- really a blue and white list -- reminiscent of the worst abuses of McCarthyism. And just as McCarthyism was a barrier to peace between the U.S. and the Soviet Union - by contributing to a dangerous atmosphere in which each side vilified and threatened the other - so too does the British lecturers' boycott endanger the progress now being made toward peace between the Israelis and Palestinians. ...

Open University professor Marc Eisenstat e-mails to alert us to his blog post "Boycott Facts," which collects much of the relevant information in one place. [UPDATE: He now has another post comparing the line the AUT took toward South Africa in 1965 to the boycott of Israeli institutions today.]

I should note also that biblioblogger Helenann Hartley has commented briefly on the boycott here.

UPDATE: And Torrey Seland comments on his Philo of Alexandria blog.