Academic boycott of South Africa

In 1965, 496 university professors and lecturers from 34 British universities signed the following declaration in protest against apartheid and violations of academic freedom. They referred to the bans against Jack Simons and Eddie Roux, two well-known progressive academics who had been banned from teaching and writing in South Africa because of their political beliefs.[4]

In December 1980, the United Nations passed a resolution "Cultural, Academic and other boycotts of South Africa":[5]

The General Assembly, .. Noting that the racist regime of South Africa is using cultural, academic, sports and other contacts to promote its propaganda for the inhumane policies of apartheid and "bantustanation",

1. Requests all States to take steps to prevent all cultural, academic, sports, and other exchanges with the racist regime of South Africa;

: :

2. Also requests States that have not yet done so:

: :

2 (b) To cease any cultural and academic collaboration with South Africa, including the exchange of scientists, students and academic personalities, as well as cooperation on research programmes.

: :

4. Urges all academic and cultural institutions to terminate all links with South Africa

5. Encourages anti-apartheid and solidarity movements in their campaigns for cultural, academic and sports boycotts of South Africa

"Boycott proponents argued that academics should not be treated as an elite detached from the political and social environment in which it functions, especially since some of the South African universities seemed to be tools of the Nationalist government."[1]

Desmond Tutu, a prominent leader within the anti-apartheid, described his clear support for the academic boycott of South Africa. He wrote that it needed to be maintained for institutions which had a bad record in opposing apartheid, but could be lifted for others as the political situation eased. The boycott had "certainly made a number of people sit up and take notice, especially the so-called liberal universities."

They thought that just as a matter of right they would find acceptance because they were allowing blacks into their establishments. I mustn't belittle them too much, I think that they did stand up for academic freedom and so forth, but I don't think myself actually that they were sufficiently vigorous and the boycott helped to knock sense into their heads, to realise that they did have a role in seeking to undermine that vicious system [of apartheid].

I would, I think, now still say that we maintain [the academic boycott] insofar as, if for instance academics from here want to go to South Africa then you want to look at who is inviting them. Under whose auspices are they going? Are they going to institutions that have a good track record in their opposition to apartheid? But I would say that as things begin to ease up, this ought perhaps to be one of the first of the constraints that goes to give some of these people the reward.

But I would myself say it is important for academics outside of South Africa also to say they want to reward places like UWC which stuck their necks out and then let these others get the crumbs that remain from the table.

"Opposition to this boycott persisted throughout the 80s: conservatives around the world disliked such anti-apartheid initiatives; campus libertarians perceived a loss of academic freedom; and some liberal South Africans argued that their universities, as centres of resistance to apartheid, made precisely the wrong targets."[2]

Opponents from within anti-Apartheid circles "argued that ideas and knowledge should be treated differently than tangible commodities, that obstacles to information access could actually hurt the victims of apartheid (for example, retard medical research and, ultimately, reduce the quality of health care), and that an academic boycott (in contrast to economic, trade, or political boycott) would not even be noticed by the South African government. Change is much more likely to occur by providing information than by withholding it."[1]

Such a boycott would cut a university off from its life blood, the nurturing flow of ideas.... The campaign plays directly into the hands of the destructive right-wing in this country which would also dearly love to cut us off from the world and its influences.[6]

Solomon Benatar, a critic, wrote that

Academic boycott has been justified as an appropriate political strategy in the struggle against the oppression of apartheid. Moral outrage against racist policies has led to the claim that academic boycott is a morally imperative component of a broader sanctions policy. This claim has neither been substantiated by a reasoned ethical argument nor weighted against an ethically justifiable approach that is consistent with universal humanitarian aspirations and which allows rejection of apartheid to be coupled to constructive endeavours.[7]

Solomon Benator,[8] a professor at University of Cape Town, and others advocated an alternative proposal: a "selective boycott"/"selective support" effort which would boycott South African organizations only if they were practitioners of apartheid and would extend support to organizations that did not practice apartheid. This alternative proposal was criticized because of both "the practical problems of implementation" and that "it implicitly endorsed the idea that political views are valid determinants of who should attend scholarly meetings, whose work should be published, and so on."[1]

"The academic boycott was more of an irritation than a true obstacle to scholarly progress."[1]

"In most cases, scholars and libraries were able to circumvent the boycott one way or another—for example, by using 'third parties' in less antagonistic countries although with delays and at greater expense."[1]

"Many [South African] scholars felt left out, isolated, unjustly discriminated against."[1]

"Suspicions were created" ... "that a submission was really rejected for political reasons, not the reasons claimed", "that the high incidence of inactive research materials, such as biological agents and antibodies, received by South African institutions was not a mere coincidence"[1]