The role of those in power is to serve here for the plight of ordinary people. This important rule has a critical caveat: adversity must be authentic, because if there is one thing bad about ignoring adversity - it is forging adversity. This is exactly the definition of a letter sent this week by Tel Aviv University President Prof. Ariel Porat to faculty members at the university. The letter, entitled "A Significant Risk to the Independence of the Higher Education System in Israel," is a political manifesto that does not seek to protect freedom of thought and academic independence, but rather the oppressive and mouth-watering hegemony that dominates the higher education system.

According to the president of Tel Aviv University, the "danger" to the academy lurks in the direction of the new Minister of Higher Education, Zeev Elkin, and his aspiration to attach a representative from Ariel University to the Planning and Budgeting Committee (TT), which budgets the higher education system. ", Prof. Porat wrote with a heartwarming compliment, but in the same breath he tagged the candidates for LUT on behalf of Ariel University as" ministers ". As part of his apolitical approach, Porat paints a horrific scenario according to which Elkin will allow the settlers from Ariel, God forbid, to gain an even more significant foothold in the academy's "Finance Committee": "I do not want to think about what will happen to Israel's higher education system." , Porat script (original exclamation mark) .Scary.

According to the president of Tel Aviv University, Elkin takes a "blatant deviation from a long-standing practice," according to which the minister in charge did not dare to select candidates independently and freely, but only from a "team" of candidates chosen for him by the heads of universities. Choose the people who are in charge of supervising the universities and their budgets. In a borrowed loan - "doers of their word." Now Elkin wants to keep the academic cat away from the cream - an action that infuriates Prof. Porat. It should be noted that the Ariel University is a Bor"h, and miraculously Bor"h presented three candidates PBC Elkin Ben-Gurion University, but none of Ariel. There are candidates "right" and "from". 

Porat Israel warns of revolution " "A third world country where there is no freedom of thought," but does not advocate the freedom of thought of his faculty members, from whom he expects to remain silent and respond to his call for battle against the government. "I trust you, my comrades, to help us in this struggle," he wrote. Of course, the "government-controlled universities" did not reject the generous hand of that government, which funds about 60 percent of the higher education budget, which this year amounted to NIS 11.8 billion. For him, ordinary taxpayers are allowed to fund his handsome salary and budgetary pension. Of the university staff in the amount of NIS 770 million - but God forbid to express their opinion through their elected representatives on the conduct of the academy. "Pay and shut up." It would have been better if the respected professor returned to high school citizenship and memorized the most basic rule in democracy: the people are sovereign.