Israeli University Chiefs Slam Naftali Bennett’s Plan To Muzzle Professors
JERUSALEM (JTA) — Israel’s Education Minister Naftali Bennett has proposed a code of ethics that would prohibit lecturers from expressing political opinions at work and from calling for an academic boycott of Israel.
Bennett defended the proposed code on Sunday, ahead of the weekly Cabinet meeting, according to reports.
“We are taking action to prevent silencing in academe, to prevent a situation where a student is getting hurt due to his political views and where a lecturer whose salary is paid by taxpayers calls for an [academic] boycott,” Bennett reportedly said during the meeting,
“We’re in favor of academic freedom. We’re against promoting political agendas in academe,” he also said.
The code, drafted by Asa Kasher, a philosophy and ethics professor at Tel Aviv University who also wrote the Israeli army’s code of ethics.
The code would require each university or college “to establish a unit that would monitor political activity” on campus, according to Haaretz. Students would be able to complain about their professors if they breach the code.
The Association of University Heads, condemned the proposed code, saying it “infringes on academic freedom in the most serious and fundamental way.”
A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you move on, I wanted to ask you to support the Forward’s award-winning journalism during our High Holiday Monthly Donor Drive.
If you’ve turned to the Forward in the past 12 months to better understand the world around you, we hope you will support us with a gift now. Your support has a direct impact, giving us the resources we need to report from Israel and around the U.S., across college campuses, and wherever there is news of importance to American Jews.
Make a monthly or one-time gift and support Jewish journalism throughout 5785. The first six months of your monthly gift will be matched for twice the investment in independent Jewish journalism.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO