Dishonest or incompetent?

Op-ed: Israeli academics lack either professional integrity or professional competence

Martin Sherman
Israel Opinion/Ynet
13 October '10

Of late, there has been a major uproar in the media over alleged bias in the Israeli academe. The "eye of the storm" was centered on a research document published earlier this month by the Institute for Zionist Strategies (IZS), whose findings indicate a sharp bias in favor of post-Zionist perspectives relative to pro-Zionists ones in the sociology departments of all the nation's major universities.

According to the study, this bias was reflected in the disproportionate distribution of the political affiliation of the faculty members, in the content of course syllabi, and in the nature of the activities of related research institutes.

Unsurprisingly, the publication of the findings produced an outburst of furious protest from those faculty members referred to in the study, who attempted to dismiss its significance, deny the validity of its findings and denigrate the competence of its authors.

Despite the criticism, there is in fact no real difficulty in proving that which the detractors seek to deny - namely the prevalence of a grave imbalance in the range of political opinions represented among the senior ranks in Israel's institutions of higher education - at least as far as the faculties of social sciences and humanities are concerned.

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