Meetings of university heads, those that are considered "true universities," have become a routine platform for complaining about the sad state of Israeli academia, especially due to a lack of budget. And that was precisely how this week's meeting went as well. Professor Manuel Trajtenberg, chairman of the Committee of University Heads, underscored budgetary issues, the difficulty universities are facing because of growing competition with a flourishing college market and pressures from "other institutions" to grant doctoral degrees. The truth is that the public -- those paying attention -- has been seeing a very different picture than that which Trajtenberg was trying to project. Take, for example, a small but fundamental detail forgotten by the professor chairman: He delivered his speech to an incomplete forum. The Ariel University president was absent. The formal explanation given for his absence was that the Ariel University president is not a member of Committee of University Heads, so he was not invited. That explanation, however, obviously neither holds water nor lives up to a single legal or even ethical criterion. If such is the case, then it means Trajtenberg refuses to accept Ariel University's status as a true university, despite the government's decision to upgrade the institution. Actually, it makes Trajtenberg the head of a committee that refuses to honor the government's decision. So be it. He must be convinced that the public is either naive or has a short memory. More than 15 months ago, university heads were busy saber-rattling at the president of the Ariel University Center, as it was known before the upgrade, Professor Yehuda Danon. Save former Bar-Ilan University President Professor Moshe Kaveh, all university heads called for a nationwide boycott of the academic center and public disregard for its very existence, basically telling it to "stay out of their gates." "There's no harder blow than that of a colleague's," the president of the shunned university responded. The heart cringed; dig the knife in deeper. I am sorry, Professor Danon, to disappoint you, but they are not your colleagues. Indeed, it is obvious your university's one true sin is its location beyond the dark hills, beyond the fictitious Green Line. Actually, the university is situated at this country's heart, in the Samarian hills. Any reasonable individual can see that the university professor heads have conglomerated, acting as an extortionist gang and doing with academia as it pleases. Divvying up the budget among the council, an estimated 8 billion shekels ($2.3 billion), is done as if the universities were state unto themselves. Professor Rivka Carmi, chairwoman of the Council for Higher Education in Israel, decided to let us, the illiterate masses, know just how academia is managed. "There is blatant interference in political matters," she said, "and we must fight it." Is the council chairwoman hearing her own words? Does she intend to fight against her chairman, who has meshed politics with his considerations of whether to invite this or that university president? Somebody here is all mixed up. Carmi noted the anti-Israel academic boycott: "We have not been affected at a basic level, but I am hearing from my staff that things aren't like they used to be. [The boycott] is impossible to ignore." Perhaps she meant the boycott that she and her friends launched against the academic center in Ariel, before it was a university, and still carry on today? Should we remind her of the Weizmann Institute president's threats and actions, labeling the upgrade of Ariel University a "strategic threat"- Often, it seems to me the university presidents' conduct of late constitutes a strategic threat to Israel. The state ought to carry out some research into academia's unique, national contributions. I'm not sure the boycotting presidents would be so thrilled by the results.
Ariel University is part of the club
מערכת היום
מערכת "היום“ מפיקה ומעדכנת תכנים חדשותיים, מבזקים ופרשנויות לאורך כל שעות היממה. התוכן נערך בקפדנות, נבדק עובדתית ומוגש לציבור מתוך האמונה שהקוראים ראויים לעיתונות טובה יותר - אמינה, אובייקטיבית ועניינית.
