Moshe
Silman is still in intensive care, at least four copycats have failed
to immolate themselves alongside banks or government offices thanks to
alert bystanders, politicians are accusing one another of being too soft
on the Haredim or being too stubborn about one or another detail of
what to do with them, and the Middle East is still the Middle East.
One of the two
hottest topics of the moment is the upgrading of the Ariel University
Center of Samaria to full university status, against those who opposed
the move for good or nefarious reasons, and some who wish it would go
away altogether along with the rest of Ariel and its 18,000 residents.
Until 2007 it
was the College of Judea and Samaria. Its intermediate title as a
university center suggested, without actually saying, that it was
already a university.
The
nomenclature associated with institutions of higher education is fuzzy
in the extreme. Differences between colleges and universities, and other
vague terms like center or institute, are there for the picking.
"University" may generally be at the top of the prestige heap, but the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the Weizmann Institute of
Science, and a few others would quarrel.
In Israel the
difference between a college and university is money. Universities get
more, enough to support research by faculty members.
The arguments
about the institution in Ariel are academic, financial, and political.
The heads of Israel's seven universities have been united in opposing
the upgrading of Ariel's name and status on the grounds of insufficient
money in the overall pot for higher education, as well as their
conclusions that Ariel's faculty component is not up to what is required
for serious teaching at the doctoral level. They claim that existing
universities suffered greatly in budget reductions and staff downsizings
in recent years, and that another university will worsen whatever
chances they have of repairing the damage.
Ariel's
supporters claim that the size and quality of is staff does not fall
below what Israel's newer universities had achieved when they passed
from college to university status.
Politics is the
elephant in the living room. Ariel is not only in the West Bank, over
the "green line" of the 1948 armistice that became Israel's border until
1967. It is the most prominent incursion into what Palestinians claim
to be theirs. Significant members of Israel's cultural, artistic, and
academic elites have declared boycotts on Ariel's theater and concert
hall, as well as its institution of higher education.
No surprise
that Israeli academics are generally left of center on the topic of
Israel and Palestine, along with just about every other issue. The trait
may be somewhat less true of academics in the natural sciences,
engineering, business administration, and economics than in other social
sciences and humanities, but those gaps are more than made up by
international allies of Israeli academics who have declared that Ariel
is out of bounds.
The other side
is also well represented. Settlers have weight in Israeli politics, and
they have friends in overseas Jewish communities who have been generous
with their wealth.
There is an
institutional complication that will affect what happens. Israel's
Coordinating Committee for Higher Education makes decisions about the
programs each university is entitled to offer, as well as the status of
institutions. The Coordinating Committee represents the heads of
universities and other institutions of higher education, and it opposes
Ariel's upgrading.
However, Ariel
is not in Israel. The separate Coordinating Committee for Higher
Education for Judea and Samaria (i.e., the West Bank), approved Ariel's
upgrading. Likud Ministers of Education and Finance, as well as the
Prime Minister support the move, with the Minister of Finance promising
more money to accommodate financial concerns.
Due to
requirements for "occupied territory," the ultimate authority for Judea
and Samaria is the Civil Administration section of the IDF. Military
personnel will have a say about the status of the Ariel institution, as
well as what courses and degrees it is allowed to offer.
Another
complication is that the budget committee of Israel's Coordinating
Committee for Higher Education parcels out the money coming from the
government budget for higher education. It may require some political
and administrative acrobatics to overcome its members' reservations
about Ariel.
The
conventional wisdom in political science is that government decisions
often do not play out as expected. Implementation is anything but
automatic, especially in the case of decisions that are controversial.
There is politics after an official decision as well as before a
decision. In this case, the folks supporting a university in Ariel may
be able to proclaim victory, but they will not have anything like
Harvard--or even the Hebrew University--overnight, in the next year,
decade, or maybe millennium, we should all live that long.
One can spin
out scenarios until the cows come home, which is a metaphor popular at
my former home in the University of Wisconsin.
Colleges and universities change slowly,
if at all, in quality and prestige. Faculty tenure means that it can
take 30 years to change the character of teaching. Or even longer,
insofar as the old fuddies make the crucial decisions about new hires
and promotions. Institutional prestige may linger longer than it should,
and continues to influence where a country's best students choose to
study. They add their own accomplishments to each institution's
prestige.
In Ariel's
case, the politics will carry on long after there is a decision about
nomenclature. Anti-settler feelings in higher education will affect
things, along with pro-settler loyalties in Likud and parties further to
the right. The standing of parties to the right of center may not be
passing fashions in a situation where the peace process is in deep coma.
Among the
possibilities is that with Ariel as a university, the weight of settlers
and Likud may bring enough new money into the overall budget for higher
education to benefit all the universities.
Yet there was
an earthquake in another quadrant of politics on the day that the
Coordinating Committee for Higher Education for Judea and Samaria
decided on upgrading Ariel,
Kadima withdrew
from the government coalition over the issue of drafting Haredim.
Support for the Netanyahu-led government thereby dropped from 94 MKs to
somewhere in the mid-60s or even less than a majority, depending on
whatever subsequent realignments occur.
Among the new
possibilities is an election in the next six months where support or
opposition for continued benefits to the Haredim will be the central
issue. Should that overcome Netanyahu's rhetorical skills, the next
government could be less friendly to the settlers as well as to the
Haredim.
It's too early to lay your bets. Yet it's also too early for a grand celebration about the future of higher education in Ariel.
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