To: Mr. Gideon Sa’ar, Israeli Minister of Education

Dear Gideon Sa’ar,

We are writing as academics to express our grave concern about the moves, initiated by Israel’s Council of Higher Education, to close down the Department of Politics and Government at Ben-Gurion University, by preventing it from registering students from the start of the next academic year.

This attack on the Department quite transparently has nothing to do with the quality of its staff, or of their teaching or research. It has everything to do with the fact that some of them have publicly taken brave and locally unpopular political positions.

The manoeuvres undertaken to try to bring this closure about already bring discredit on the governance of the Israeli higher education system. Should they be successful in closing the Department, it will be a permanent stain on the reputation of Israel’s universities.

As Professor Rivka Carmi, President of Ben-Gurion University, has written, the politically motivated closure of the Department “will constitute a devastating blow to academic independence in Israel”.

We call upon the Council of Higher Education to reject the recommendation of its Sub-Committee.

Dr Robert Boyce, London School of Economics

Professor Jonathan Rosenhead, London School of Economics