Israel's new academic ethics code: A breath of fresh air - by

...All should agree that while blatantly racist speech is protected by law, engaging in it is unacceptable in the classroom – and rightfully so. Similarly, while it might be protected free speech for professors to curse at right-wing students in the hallways, call politicians neo-Nazis in class and scold students who show up to class in IDF uniform (all of which have occurred in Israeli academia), is that what we want to see in our universities? It is precisely for these reasons that academic codes of ethics are needed, just as codes of ethics are needed for doctors, lawyers and nearly every other profession.

Eytan Meir..
Israel Hyom..
27 March '18..
Link: http://www.israelhayom.com/opinions/the-new-academic-ethics-code-a-breath-of-fresh-air/

This week, Israel's Council for Higher Education approved the hotly debated academic code of ethics written by the author of the IDF Code of Ethics, Professor Asa Kasher, which aims to set clear guidelines regarding the role of political activity in academia.

Among other things, the code seeks to address the widespread phenomenon wherein certain professors – under the guise of academic freedom – use their positions to subject students to politicized material that reflects only one side of an academic debate, while at the same time prohibiting other points of view, particularly from students.

Contrary to the inaccurate claims of the code's detractors, the code does not in any way stifle political debate or ban political discussion from the classroom.

The code is a breath of fresh air for Israeli academia. It aims to create an environment in which students are presented with both sides of the discussion, allowing them to think critically, engage in vibrant academic exchange, and arrive at their own conclusions.

Unfortunately, many professors believe that their academic mandate gives them the right to preach only one side of the debate, while bullying and berating students who voice opposing views.

In more extreme, but not uncommon, instances, right-wing students are afraid to voice their opinions in class or to write pro-Israel content in their papers, out of concern that their grades will be negatively affected.

This is not academic freedom. This is not pluralism. This is coercion in the service of indoctrination.

Sherman - Into the Fray: A giant pall of shame

Martin Sherman
Into the Fray
JPost
14 October '11


Israeli academe will have much to answer for to future generations, both for what it has done and what it hasn’t.


http://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Columnists/Article.aspx?id=241650

"Kindly remove me from your mailing list; I have no patience for your tiresome, hackneyed, outdated rantings” –An e-mail from Prof. David Shulman, the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, after receiving my last opinion column, “Reassessing root causes and red herrings.”

Barely a week after the Technion’s Dan Shechtman was awarded the Nobel prize in Chemistry, the sixth Israeli laureate in 10 years, would appear inauspicious timing for a caustic rebuke of Israeli academe.

But although the nation’s institutes of higher learning can indeed point to an impressive accumulation of accomplishments, it has a much darker side as well, which can no longer be ignored.

True, much of the intellectual output of Israel’s universities has contributed immensely to the bolstering the country — both in terms of physical security and international stature. Lamentably, this is not the whole picture.

Detrimental, dysfunctional... disloyal?


One of the gravest challenges facing Israel today is the international assault on its legitimacy. Much of this assault is being precipitated — certainly facilitated and exacerbated — by prominent figures within the Israeli academe.

Some of this is a result of purposeful intent on the part of self-professed post- /anti-Zionist faculty members, some the result of misguided mindlessness on the part of purported Zionist ones. But whatever the motivation, the time has come to illuminate these dark corners and drive out the lengthening shadow of disgrace.

For an increasingly visible, vocal and vitriolic sector among Israeli academics is playing an influential role in the public discourse on the Arab-Israeli conflict that can only be defined as detrimental, dysfunctional and, regrettably, at times disloyal.

Motivated mainly by fear of donor desertion, university authorities have attempted to downplay the scope of the phenomenon – trying to dismiss it as marginal in influence and negligible in size.

This is a manifest misrepresentation of the facts.

Although it is true that this malaise does not affect — or is that infect? — large swathes of Israel’s academic community, and that it is mainly prevalent in the faculties of social sciences and humanities (including law), this does not accurately reflect the extent of its pernicious impact.

Our Children and the False Gods of the Academic Left

Tuvia Brodie
The Jewish Leadership Blog
13 June '11




As news stories accumulate discussing the danger of being Jewish at Left-leaning American colleges, perhaps we should consider the Left on Israel’s campuses.

The academic Left is a small but potentially powerful force in Israel. It is they who lead the Boycotts, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement here; they celebrate international condemnation of Israel; and they promote an openly anti-Israel agenda.

By definition, this group is articulate. They are some of the best educated among us, and some are the most honored educators we have. Our college-age children—impressionable and eager to please those who control their grades—are attracted to them like iron particles to a magnet. Whatever kool-aid they offer, our children drink.

The academic Left seem to enjoy almost unlimited freedom. To a large extent, they do as they please. They create rules which few dare question. If you have gone to an Israeli college, you understand the power they exert over our children.

If you have gone to a faculty gathering, you also understand that academe is not a world of equals. In fact, there is no equality. Instead, there is an unequal class structure: the tenured professor; the tenure-seeking professor; the non-tenure-track teacher; the part-time teacher; and the graduate assistant. As with all class-based societies, everyone here has his place and everyone knows his place.

The elite are the tenured. They live with the freedom and the arrogance that come to those called ‘first –class.’

The anti-Israel academic Left is populated, primarily, by two groups, the tenured elite and the untenured wannabees, some of whom will get their tenure because they sing the right songs.

Today, those ‘right’ songs are about creating another state for Arabs—at Israel’s expense. The songs are about ‘social justice’ and ‘equality’. According to this political gospel, the rights of the Arab supercede the rights of the Jew, capitalism is poisonous, and religion is fascism. Our children worship at their feet.

But there is a troubling problem here, because both the call of Academic Left—and the Academic Left itself—is built on hypocrisy.

Haven’t you noticed? While Leftist academics celebrate equality, they themselves benefit from an elitist world that is fundamentally unequal, a world that favors the chosen—the tenured—above all others. While they promote equality and justice through the power of the government over the individual, they demand for themselves the kind of individual freedom you can only find in an unequal world.

Perhaps it is hypocrisy that makes the call of the Academic Left seem so dangerous—the promotion of ‘equality’ and ‘justice’ as the cure for what ails us; for if you do not admit that the world you love rejects the world you promote, can you really admit that the causes you support are toxic?

To understand this question, consider a recent Jonathan Rosenblum essay about America (and Israel): it is not equality that made America wealthy, he argues, but freedom—specifically, the freedom to pursue one’s own economic dream. Equality did not make America great; enhanced freedom did. Interestingly, this is exactly what the tenured academic Left has—almost unlimited freedom; but freedom is exactly what the academic Left rejects for others.

If your children wish a proper grade, they must think the ‘proper’ (anti-Israel) way; the same is often true for those who seek tenure. That is not freedom.

As Rosenblum points out, it is the emphasis of freedom over equality that has made Israel and America number one and two in the world (in that order) for ‘per capita rate of business formation’, which lies at the foundation of successful national wealth; but the academic Left has chosen to sell the reverse--equality over freedom. Our children drink every word.

A case might be made that the value that promotes the most freedom for the most citizens is exactly this value: the belief in individual freedom to create personal wealth. Arab nations seem to have no clue about this—and, you’ll notice, they have few freedoms. It may be no accident that America has such a high rate of business formations; but it is both astounding and predictive that Israel is number one in the world in that category—it astounds because Israel is so small and so restrained by intense security needs, and it is predictive because, based on America’s experience, Israel’s future wealth potential is enormous.

But the academic Left rejects this. Living with unprecedented freedom-- and inequality-- they prefer to seduce our children with songs of an equality and a social conformity their own lifestyle rejects. They promote false gods—and our children worship them.

Certainly, not all academics are Leftists--and not all of our children drink the kool-aid. We should remember that. But as the academic Left sells its false gods to our children, shouldn’t we worry about our children?

Read your Tanach. Do your children understand the consequences of worshipping false gods?

Do you?


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Israel’s democracy wars

Why is it assumed that the doyens of Israeli academia are necessarily democratic and good judges of the country’s democratic character?


Prof. Shlomo Sand

Seth J. Frantzman
Terra Incognita/JPost
04 May '10

The most common nervous reaction among a certain segment of Israel’s left is the refrain that Israel is always threatened by undemocratic forces from within. The Tami Steinmetz Center for Peace Research at Tel Aviv University recently released a poll showing that the average adult Jewish Israeli believes “there is too much freedom of expression” and that many respondents “favor punishing Israeli citizens who support sanctioning or boycotting the country.”

Haaretz’s headline screamed “Israel’s Jews back gag on rights groups.”

The reaction was fast and furious from the academic establishment, which had commissioned the study. Prof. Daniel Bar-Tal of TAU claimed “Israelis have a distorted perception of democracy – most people are almost anti-democratic.”

David Newman of Ben-Gurion University and fellow Jerusalem Post columnist claimed the results were “very worrying.”

THE SURVEY was a self-fulfilling prophecy. Large segments of Israeli academia and various organizations like the Israeli Democracy Institute believe the public is anti-democratic and they craft surveys to tell them exactly that. The fact that the survey measured only Jewish members of society should have been a red herring.

It is no different from a survey by Ma’agar Mochrot in March that surveyed Arabs and Jews on “democracy” but primarily wanted to examine young people’s attitudes on the state’s Arab citizens. What about what the Arabs had to say about the Jews and the state?

Why is it assumed that the doyens of Israeli academia are necessarily democratic and good judges of the country’s democratic character? Bar-Tal, for instance, is on the editorial board of the Palestine-Israel Journal whose logo is a Palestinian flag and an Israeli flag without the Star of David and which routinely refers to Palestinian terrorism as “resistance.” When they “understand” Palestinian terrorism, support boycotts of Israel, the “one-state solution” or encourage soldiers not go to the army, are these “democratic” choices?

(Read full article)

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