Academic leader calls Elkin ‘commissar of higher education’
The decision to fire Neumann was announced on Monday night and followed Elkin’s failure to appoint Ariel University rector Michael Zinigrad to the CHE’s Planning and Budgeting Committee.
By HAGAY HACOHENZe'ev Elkin(photo credit: MARC ISRAEL SELLEM/THE JERUSALEM POST)
Association of University Heads (AUH) president Ron Robin resigned Tuesday over the removal of Council for Higher Education (CHE) director Michal Neumann.As part of his announcement, he said Higher and Secondary Education Minister Ze’ev Elkin is a “commissar of higher education.”The rank of commissar was used in the USSR by persons who were in charge of ensuring the ideological loyalty of colleagues.Commissars could punish those whom they viewed as lacking proper ideological understanding.The decision to fire Neumann was announced on Monday night and followed Elkin’s failure to appoint Ariel University rector Michael Zinigrad to the CHE’s Planning and Budgeting Committee (PBC), currently headed by Yaffa Zilbershatz.Normally, a minister appoints the members, and the CHE approves the nomination.In Zinigrad’s case, some questions had been raised over the accuracy of his reported publications, and he decided to decline the position.Elkin then suggested three other Ariel University faculty members, while the CHE suggested four other possible nominees, three of them from Ben-Gurion University of the Negev.Since the PBC controls higher-education funding, having a member from Ariel University, which is in Samaria, on the council was considered by some to be politically motivated.On Sunday, Tel Aviv University president Ariel Porat said Elkin was trying to pack the PBC with “pawns.” Politicization of higher education might turn Israel into a third-world country, he wrote in a public letter.“We must wake up. Israel may already have become Turkey,” Robin said Tuesday, meaning a country in which people who speak their minds can land in prison.The Higher and Secondary Education Ministry did not respond to a Jerusalem Post request for comment.
Related TagsZe’ev Elkinhigher education
if(catID != 151){
var cont = `Take Israel home with the new Jerusalem Post Store
