With the late start of the academic year at universities, it is worth noting the curse of uniformity, which is one of the most prominent failures in academia. Recall that the curse of uniformity exists on different levels in other spaces as well. In the year preceding the war, it was the composition of the Supreme Court that was the focus of public attention on the question of the level of uniformity among its members. About the establishment media, everything has already been said in this regard. In the year following the war, attention is likely to be drawn to the issue of uniformity in the composition of certain units and in the General Staff.
Awareness of what is happening in academia has recently risen again in the wake of serious antisemitic incidents on American campuses, especially after the horror show of the presidency of three of the most prestigious universities at a congressional hearing. The failures in American universities are many, and for the purposes of our discussion we will focus only on the curse of uniformity.
After years of deep processes, the basic division in the American public between Democrats and Republicans, between liberals and conservatives, has almost completely disappeared from universities. The Conservatives have become a negligible and marginal minority at best, and non-existent at worst. In some areas, moderate liberals are also becoming a minority, replaced by radical progressives. It is precisely in the academic space, where more than any other space requires constant brainstorming between different and opposing approaches and positions, that the curse of uniformity and monotony of thought has been established.
The situation in Israeli universities is not as severe as in American universities, but the curse of uniformity, coupled with over-representation of the radical left, is also evident in Israel. Many efforts, for example, are required to find an active professor in the social sciences who identifies as right-wing and a member of the nationalist camp. Full disclosure: This writer has often served as such a fig leaf on a variety of panels over the years, just in case the conference organizers cared about having such minimal representation.
On the other hand, the students will meet hundreds of lecturers from the "Academy for Equality" group, which claims to be "an organization that strives to promote equality and representation in academia of all sectors living in Israel." But even in so-called "equality" there is a hierarchy, and not everyone is entitled to it. Don't bother looking for right-wing professors on the list of inequality sufferers, for example. They are not included in the right to equality, while Palestinians lead the list of those who suffer from inequality. The group also rushed to join dozens of radical leftist organizations in calling on President Biden to act to prevent the humanitarian crisis in Gaza.
In the summer before the war, the vast majority (about 90%) of university faculty members decided to support the academic strike over legal reform. not against the background of employment conditions and labor dispute or violation of academic freedom; Illegal political strike against reform
The internal debate over judicial reform clearly demonstrated the curse of uniformity. In February 2023, under the headline "How is it that all legal academia speaks with a unified voice?", Netael Bandel described the phenomenon in this newspaper. It's not just the uniformity, but also the blatant attacks on anyone who dares to deviate from the chorus, behavior learned from American campuses. When at one of the conferences a pro-reform representative came up to speak, the silence that prevailed was broken by interim calls by none other than retired Supreme Court Justice Hanan Meltzer.
In the summer before the war, the vast majority (about 90%) of university faculty members decided to support the academic strike over legal reform. not against the background of employment conditions and labor dispute or violation of academic freedom; Illegal political strike against the reform.
One of the changes required in academia is the promotion of diversity of opinion among faculty on all subjects and fields. It is inconceivable that the space in which more than any brainstorming and dialogue between approaches and positions is required will suffer from the curse of uniformity. It is not inconceivable that the student public, some of whom will return from the long and difficult war, will show more interest than in the past and will arouse criticism of the phenomenon in the classrooms, and raise the demand to remove or at least moderate the curse of uniformity in academia.
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