Gaza attack leads prominent academic to rethink his opposition to the academic boycott

Professor Martin Shaw has long been sceptical about boycotting Israel
in general and the academic and cultural boycott in particular. Israel’s
assault on Gaza has forced him to rethink his position.

In an essay on Open Democracy ‘Boycotting
Israel: the situation has changed and I have changed my mind too’.
He used to believe, ‘As an academic, I valued academic discourse
and although I knew that Israeli universities were implicated in injustices
against Palestinians, they were also disproportionately centres of debate
and even opposition.’ But now he argues, ‘A boycott of Israeli
institutions is a price they will have to pay to prevent a repeat of
what we have seen over the last two weeks – or worse.’