Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s judicial overhaul program will harm Israel’s global academic and scientific standing, six Israeli and one American Nobel Prize winners warned the government on Sunday.
“We, the Israeli winners of the Nobel Prize, who work, live and are active in the country or who did our scientific work in Israel and tied our fates and the fates of our families to the State of Israel, express to you our deep concern for the proposed changes to the judicial system,” they wrote in a letter addressed to Netanyahu, President Isaac Herzog and the presidents of Israeli universities.
“Scientific-technological research and advanced higher education thrive in democratic countries where there is a clear separation of powers,” they explained.
In the absence of such a system, “the State of Israel will lose its scientific and technological excellence, a loss that will severely damage its economy, security and international status,” they stated.
Countries without a strong democracy like Poland, Turkey, or Hungary have not captured the center stage when it comes to scientific research, they said, adding that this is true even when those counties are superpowers such as Russia and China.
“Countries where the political regime sets priorities for research and higher education lose out when it comes to scientific excellence,” they wrote.
Absolute freedom is needed for scientific developments and technological innovation to thrive, the laureates explained.
“In the countries where the research and higher education institutions were enslaved to the will of the executive authority, the scientific and technological development infrastructures were destroyed,” they stated.
University and college graduates and world-renowned research institutions will prefer countries with a stable democratic regime, they explained.
Status of women is also a matter of concern
The Nobel laureates also spoke of their concern about steps that would harm the status of women in the academic world as well as the introduction of study programs without a scientific basis, the licensing of essential subjects by nonprofessional bodies, and other changes that the executive authority could require which would undermine the credibility of the entire higher education system.
Those who signed the letter were chemistry laureates Avram Hershko and Aaron Ciechanover with a 2004 award, American Roger Kornberg, a professor at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, with a 2006 award, Ada Yonath with a 2009 award, and Arieh Warshel and Michael Levitt with a 2013 award.
Daniel Kahneman, who has a 2002 Nobel Prize in economics, also signed the letter.