Britain's biggest association of higher education instructors voted Monday to urge its 67,000 members to consider boycotting Israeli academics who had failed to renounce what it called Israel's "apartheid policies."

The resolution by the National Association of Teachers in Further and Higher Education deepened the contest among academics in Britain, the United States and the Middle East that has evoked questions of academic freedom. The debate threatened to further divide British academics into camps — for or against the imposition of penalties on Israeli university teachers cast as complicit in Israeli government actions in the West Bank and Gaza.

At its annual conference in Blackpool, in northern England, the association voted 106 to 71 in favor of the resolution, which called for the organization's members "to consider their own responsibility for ensuring equity and nondiscrimination in contacts with Israeli educational institutions or individuals." There were 21 abstentions, said Trevor Phillips, an association spokesman.