The University and College Union wants its 120,000 members to refuse to participate in what it sees as a government-led “witch hunt” to root out Islamic radicals on university campuses.

According to the Telegraph, the UCU claims Muslims are being “demonized” because of new guidelines asking staff to log suspicious behavior in light of concerns that campuses are being infiltrated by extremists recruiting candidates to wage jihad, to vet Islamic preachers who have been invited to campuses, to see that “hate literature” is not distributed among students, and to report suspicious behavior to police.

Professor Anthony Glees, the director of Brunel University’s centre for intelligence and security studies, has long warned that Islamic militants are recruiting students at more than 25 campuses.

In its annual conference this week the UCU is also debating whether British professors should, in solidarity with Palestinians, boycott their Israeli colleagues.

Professor Steven Weinberg, an American Nobel laureate in physics from the University of Texas at Austin, says such actions reflect “moral blindness.” In face of “the history of the attacks on Israel and the oppressiveness and aggressiveness of other countries in the Middle East and elsewhere,” he adds, “it is hard to find any explanation other than anti-Semitism.”

So effete and blinded by moral relativism are these professors that they can’t even see their way toward joining in a common effort to stamp out terrorism.