The President's Report
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The President’s Report 2006 / 2007 The Hebrew University of Jerusalem The President’s Report 2006 2007 The President’s Contents 2 From the President Report 4 Humanities 18 Medical Sciences 30 New Faculty 34 Research Activities 36 Interdepartmental Equipment Units 38 Student Life 40 Physical Development 42 The Campaign 44 Financial Report 50 Officers of the University 50 Board of Governors 52 Benefactors 54 Campaign Gifts 58 Major Gifts 2 From the President FROM THE PRESIDENT Dear Governor As in the past few years, the Hebrew University covers an extensive range of human cultures and continues to face financial uncertainty, government genres of human creativity within the broadest budget cuts and indecisive policy on higher education. geographic parameters. We need to create a new This year however, the government realized that the paradigm for the humanities that emphasizes the situation cannot continue and appointed a blue-ribbon discourse between cultures, genres and periods while committee under the chairmanship of former finance preserving the classical scholarship in which we excel. minister Avraham “Baiga” Shochat. We therefore formed an international committee The committee was charged with conducting a headed by Professor John Gager of Princeton University, thorough review of key aspects of higher education whose recommendations to restructure the Faculty, its in Israel: government funding, student tuition curricula and academic and administrative structure (complemented by student support), services for are in the process of being implemented. We are students, the division of labor between universities also considering ways to adapt both the physical and colleges, employment models for faculty and academic infrastructure of the Faculty to this members and support for research. The committee’s new approach. recommendations — to be submitted in June — are We are likewise pursuing a paradigm change in likely to have a major impact on our environment. medical research, the second theme of this report. Unfortunately, several main players became highly Again, in order to create openness, flexibility and concerned about the potential changes and launched interchange, we aim to remove the barriers between a public campaign against the Shochat Committee. disciplines and create a more integrated approach The faculty members’ union embarked on a strike that whereby, for instance, a particular medical problem was concluded only by a firm government commitment is studied from genetic, molecular, physiological, that the committee’s recommendations would be pharmacological and other aspects. In order to implemented only following negotiations and an agreed implement this vision, we have established the Institute settlement. As I write, the nationwide student union for Medical Research (IMR) which will bring together strike — which started with a demand for lower tuition various disciplinary departments and will facilitate fees — continues. We hope that it will end shortly and the creation of flexible research teams formed around the committee be allowed to conclude its work. specific medical problems. This endeavor will require a We hope that the committee’s recommendations major investment of resources in physical and research will chart a course that will allow higher education and infrastructure. the country’s top research universities — of which the The Faculty of Agricultural, Food and Environmental Hebrew University is the leading institute — to realize Quality Sciences is also undergoing a paradigm their full potential. change. In place of its focus on food production, we In spite of these uncertainties and pressures, are seeking an integrative approach which combines Hebrew University faculty and researchers continue the environmental impact of food production with to have a major impact in their fields. Indeed, at the understanding the impact of food quality and function beginning of this year, we formulated four major on the individual consumer. This approach will involve thrusts of academic development that will rejuvenate reorganizing the Faculty into four major units — an and recast specific traditional areas of strength. institute of environmental agriculture, the existing Our Faculty of Humanities — a theme of this report — Robert H. Smith Institute of Plant Sciences and From the President 3 Genetics in Agriculture, an animal sciences division These four visions for our future represent a tremendous incorporating the Koret School of Veterinary Medicine challenge that will require the coordinated efforts and an institute for food and nutrition. Interdisciplinary of our faculty and administration, together with our research centers also will encourage this new many friends and supporters — and the leadership of paradigm of integrative agriculture. the new Chairman of the Board of Governors Charles The Hebrew University is a highly respected center H. Goodman — to generate the necessary resources. of brain studies, with some 100 faculty involved in Indeed, the challenge becomes even greater when studies of the human brain. As part of the regular faced by the current pressures and uncertainties. process of academic monitoring, we convened a I firmly believe that our great university must not prestigious committee headed by Professor Gerald succumb to everyday pressures. We must reaffirm D. Fischbach, former dean of the Faculty of Medicine our commitment to continue to have a major impact at Columbia University, and including two Nobel on the world, on the Jewish people, on Israel and on laureates, which recommended creating a brain Jerusalem. I am confident that the Hebrew University research center that will physically incorporate some can meet such a challenge. of the relevant researchers and will engage the others in a collaborative approach. In the words of the committee: “Given the appropriate conditions and resources, the Hebrew University can become one of the very few leading centers in the world in Professor Menachem Magidor brain research.” President Prof. Sarah Stroumsa Prof. David Shulman Prof. Gabriel M. Rosenbaum Prof. Ruth Fine & Dr. Tzachi Zamir Prof. Yosef Garfinkel Amirim Program Humanities Humanities 7 PROFESSOR SARAH STROUMSA Islamic Infusion Ideas constantly flow between individuals and cultures. immediate Muslim surroundings.” In the process, some come to the fore, while others Studying Medieval Islam, says Stroumsa, gives fade into oblivion, says Professor Sarah Stroumsa. a particular resonance to today’s televised images. “To fully understand a culture, one must “Observing current events tends to encourage a one- comprehend the multifaceted world to which it dimensional understanding of Islam. If, however, we belongs, and follow the relay race of ideas within it,” examine it from an historical perspective, we realize says Stroumsa, the Alice and Jack Ormut professor of that this form of Islam is one among many possible Arabic Studies and a member of the departments of others. Islam, like other religions, changed and Arabic Language and Literature and of Jewish Thought. took many divergent forms over time. This historical “Each time a culture appropriates an idea from another viewpoint — in which concepts and ideas are shown culture, it modifies that idea to fit its own tradition, to be dynamic — allows a more nuanced analysis, and so that it seems to be a natural inner development,” gives a clear sense of the superficiality of the limited she says. “It means that in order to understand major picture that predominates today.” changes in Jewish thought, one must examine them in A former vice-rector of the Hebrew University the context of the greater society; and to understand who is spending the 2006/2007 year on sabbatical at the thought of Jewish luminaries who lived under the University of Pennsylvania, Stroumsa has been Islam, one must delve into the Arabic, Islamic culture a visiting scholar at universities around the world. in which they were infused.” “Hebrew University faculty members are encouraged An expert on philosophy and religious thought in the to travel on sabbaticals, and I believe we should take medieval Islamic world, Stroumsa currently focuses on advantage of this. The exchange of ideas is crucial for the intellectual exchange between Jews and Muslims all sciences,” she says. “We are tempted to believe in Islamic Spain and the cultural landscape in which that nowadays one can obtain anything on the internet. they operated. But nothing replaces the serendipitous insights gained Maimonides, whom she describes as “a from a face-to-face conversation, and which might Mediterranean thinker”, is thus a subject of Prof. never have occurred to us otherwise.” Stroumsa’s studies. “Everything Maimonides did bears the imprint of his Jewish identity, but it was also shaped by the fact that he was part of a larger, more complex society. His ideas were informed by past civilizations as well as by his Muslim neighbors,” she says. “You cannot understand his writings — even works that are written in Hebrew rather than Judaeo-Arabic and seem exclusively Jewish — unless you read them in the context of contemporary Muslim compositions. And you cannot appreciate his formidable innovations — such as his revolutionary decision to compose a single comprehensive code of law, the Mishneh Torah — without taking into account the impact of political and religious upheavals in his Humanities 9 PROFESSOR DAVID SHULMAN Into India What might seem an esoteric academic field to the languages “in my lifetime