***** The Academic Boycott of South Africa: Symbolic Gesture or Effective Agent of Change?
F. W. Lancaster University of Illinois at Urbana- Champaign and Lorraine Haricombe Northern Illinois University
From the early 1960s until very recently, scholars in South Africa were subjected to various forms of boycott within the international academic community. The academic boycott, strongly supported by the African National Congress and agencies of the United Nations, was part of a much broader sanctions campaign including political, economic, cultural, and sports elements designed to express condemnation of the policy of apartheid and to force change in the racial policies of the South African government. The academic boycott was intended to "isolate" scholars in South Africa by depriving them of the formal and informal sources of information needed to further their research and of the conduits through which they could bring their own work to the attention of the international community.
Manifestations and Levels of the Boycott
At least eight manifestations of this boycott can be recognized:
1.Scholars refusing to travel to South Africa or to invite South Africans abroad; 2.Publishers, journals, and the like, refusing to publish South African manuscripts; 3.Scholars abroad refusing to collaborate with South African scholars; 4.Publishers abroad refusing to provide access to information (for example, books or computer software); 5.International conferences barring South Africans; 6.Institutions abroad denying South African academics access; 7.Institutions abroad refusing to recognize South African degrees; 8.Scholars abroad refusing to act as external examiners for theses presented at South African universities.
Elements of such a boycott can exist at national, institutional, or personal levels. At the national level, for example, some countries including Japan, India, Finland, and the Soviet Union routinely denied visas to South Africans. At the institutional level, scholarly bodies prevented South Africans from attending their conferences, rejected manuscripts submitted for publication, or otherwise put obstacles in the way of scholarly discourse with South Africans. Trinity College, Dublin, provides an extreme example: it forbade its faculty to collaborate with South Africans, threatening those who disobeyed with censure or dismissal....
[The full text is available at <http://www.iit.edu/departments/csep/perspective/persp2.html>.] *****
Here's an ANC archive of documents concerning (academic, economic, consumer, cultural, and sports) boycotts against apartheid: <http://www.anc.org.za/ancdocs/history/boycotts/>. -- Yoshie
* Calendar of Events in Columbus: <http://www.osu.edu/students/sif/calendar.html> * Anti-War Activist Resources: <http://www.osu.edu/students/sif/activist.html> * Student International Forum: <http://www.osu.edu/students/sif/> * Committee for Justice in Palestine: <http://www.osu.edu/students/CJP/>