החוג למחשבת ישראל, בחסות תומכי
נתניהו
More bad news about our friends at the neoconservative Tikvah Fund running roughshod over Jewish Studies, this time in Israel as reported in Haaretz. The bottom line. The Hebrew University is broke and can’t afford to fund properly the Department of Jewish Thought. The Tikvah Fund offers to support 4 lines, but its officers insist on interviewing the candidates first. To be clear, the article mentions that once the university found out about the interviewing process they asked for it to be stopped. Tikvah still provides funding, but without conducting interviews. One can only hope that that’s the end of the story, although I suspect that this will be a matter of more or less. While university programs always depend upon outside donors, usually individual ones, I’ve never heard of an instance in which faculty are vetted first by donor organizations. There’s supposed to be a firewall here, the breach of which severely contaminates the work and the reputation of the department and the entire field it represents. I’m citing the article from Haaretz. I’ll look for an English translation.
Clarification- The article mentions that once the university found out about the interviewing process they asked for it to be stopped, and since then Tikvah still provides funding without conducting interviews.
thanks, Yitz. i’ll tuck that into the post.