Israel’s government on Sunday approved the appointment of two new members for the powerful Council for Higher Education (CHE), after an additional two candidates backed out at the last minute amid accusations against Education Minister Yoav Kisch of politicization of the council.
According to its website, the CHE is the official authority for higher education in Israel and determines this system’s policies. The CHE was founded pursuant to the Council for Higher Education Law of 1958 as an independent and unaffiliated statutory corporation to separate Israel’s political system from its higher education one and to prevent interference with academic freedom.
On Sunday morning, the government was scheduled to appoint four new members to the committee: Physicist Prof. Ehud Duchovni of the Weizmann Institute of Science, law Prof. Gideon Sapir of Bar Ilan University, biotechnology engineer Prof. Marcelle Makhluf of the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology, and the Mayor of Netanya, Miriam Feirberg-Ikar.
The intended appointments were publicly criticized, as three out of the four have political connections or agendas in line with the government. Sapir is one of the founders of the Kohelet Policy Forum, the think tank behind the government’s controversial judicial reforms; Duchovni is a member of the Likud and publicly backed the judicial reforms; and Feirberg-Ikar was also a long-time member of the Likud.The government’s proposal noted that Duchovni was a “non-active” member of the Likud, that Sapir had signed a conflict-of-interest agreement regarding his activities in Kohelet, and that Feirberg-Ikar since 2008 has been an independent and not a member of the Likud, so enough time has passed for the appointment to not be considered political.
Members of the Association of University Heads (known by its Hebrew acronym, VERA), a voluntary body that includes the presidents, rectors, and director generals of each of Israel’s universities, wrote a letter earlier on Sunday morning to Attorney-General Gali Baharav-Miara, arguing that the appointments were made without due process and were an attempt to politicize the CHE while Israelis were looking the other way.
Appointments politicizing the Council for Higher Education
“The eagerness to bring the issue to the government without waiting to receive VERA’s position, during wartime and following a weekend of great apprehension by all residents of the State of Israel due to fear of an attack by Iran and Hezbollah, indicates an attempt to bypass the professional body, which is, in itself, a serious violation of the provisions of the law and the procedure regarding the appointment of members of the CHE,” VERA wrote.VERA’s chairman and the head of the Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Prof. Daniel Haimovitz, added in a letter directly to Kisch that he was “disappointed, once again, to discover that, especially in these days, you found it appropriate to make a one-sided decision without a proper consultation procedure, and certainly without our consent. The takeover of academia by politics is the beginning of the end of democracy. We cannot shake the impression that you are acting to promote a political and unprofessional agenda during wartime and under the cover of a security escalation.”Following the letters, at the last minute, Sapir and Feirberg-Ikar removed their candidacy, and the government approved the candidacy of Duchovni and Makhluf.The CHE law requires that the number of council members shall be no less than 19 and no more than 25, of which at least two-thirds must be “of academic standing with institutions of higher education, as recommended by the minister of education and based on consultations with the recognized institutions.”The council must also include two representatives of the Student Union. The minister of education himself serves as the council’s chairperson.CHE members are formally appointed by Israel’s president for five-year terms.