One of my grandmother's methods for peace to silence our roar of laughter - her grandchildren - when we saddened her as a child, was to say as loudly to herself, "Laughter, laughter, but in every joke there is truth." We would pause immediately and try to understand who she was referring to, and what truth she was talking about. When I once dared to ask her "No joke she's just funny, Grandma?" I replied with a favorite saying: "A sure horseradish worm that is sweet as sugar." Kerry: The joke cover makes it easy to accept the painful things. In Yiddish it sounds better. 

The Ministry of Higher and Advanced Education was also born as a joke. I am convinced of that. Looked for a large office that could be cut out of wings to supplement missing ministers, and suddenly the Higher Education and Adult Education divisions of the Ministry of Education and the Community Society were suddenly reminded. I am sure that the foundations of the Forgotten Wing rolled with laughter as they wrapped these units together with some water resources. We also learned that from Rabbi Elazar ben Azaria, because "there is no water, no Torah" .... What, no? 

But this time too, Grandma was right. This accidental joke is based on a real need to change higher education and to fit Israeli society in 2020. Let's face it: Since the reform of the academic colleges of Prof. Amnon Rubinstein in the Ministry of Education in the mid-1990s, a reform accessible to the higher education system for disadvantaged groups (Today, more than 60 percent of all students in Israel), ministers and education ministries were hardly involved in this system. This is natural and logical in the face of the sheer size of the complex educational system and challenges. 

This lack of occupation resulted in the institutions in many ways managing themselves and often forgetting their responsibility to the society that established them. It started with the Arab minority, which is being discriminated against both as a student (which is based on culturally biased psychometry) as well as promotion as faculty; Continuing to utilize junior staff and foreign lecturers, who, although they are the main workforce, still receive the status of many privileged contract workers, and this has ended in doors closed to ultra-Orthodox populations who want to learn as they continue to keep their way of life. Alienation to society and place is also reflected in the demand from faculty members to stay abroad for several years to advance in the system. A requirement that also excludes those from leading institutions who do not have enough resources and connections to do so, and also shifted the research focus from what is also needed to our state, to what is only interesting to those who are In this way, the academy stopped speaking Israeli and began to speak American, even if it was in Hebrew 

, but first and foremost it is our duty as academics to do so and to be an oasis of wisdom and opinion for anyone who is thirsty in the wilderness. But a minister who concentrates on this will complete the shortfall and be able to lead the change He will be able to inject a lot of live water into the academy's closed garden, no wall can stop the trees from breaking out for the enjoyment of those outside. I am sure my grandmother, too, would find no reason to fault such a joke that gives rise to such a truth. 

Prof. Yuval Albashan is the Dean of the Law Faculty Academic Ono