Le département “Politics and Government” de l’Université Ben Gourion du Néguev est dans la mire du ministère israélien de l’Enseignement supérieur. Un comité d’évaluation appuyé par des universitaires étrangers considère que les recherches qui y sont menées sont trop marquées par les “approches radicales” et recommande de fermer le département tant qu’un rééquilibrage vers des approches plus “mainstream” (“quantitative methodological approaches, political theory and comparative politics” selon le rapport d’évaluation) n’est pas effectué. Ce faisant, ce comité refuse d’ailleurs de prendre en compte les concessions importantes déjà effectuées en ce sens par le département à travers plusieurs recrutements.

Je connais personnellement Haim Yacobi, membre de ce département, qui était notre invité l’an dernier pour le séminaire Villes Territoires Mondialisations à Lyon (voir ici et là). Ses travaux, articles et ouvrages sont publiés dans les meilleures revues et collections internationales, comme le sont d’ailleurs ceux de ses collègues, par exemple, pour en citer un que j’ai également lu, le livre de Neve Gordon, Israel’s Occupation (sur l’occupation des territoires après 1967 jusqu’à aujourd’hui). Le problème n’est donc pas la qualité des travaux mais bien leur tonalité politique. Haim Yacobi est par exemple l’un des fondateurs de Bimkom. Planning for Human Rights, une ONG active à Jérusalem-Est pour aider les Palestiniens à planifier et construire les extensions de leurs quartiers malgré les restrictions urbanistiques imposées par la municipalité de Jérusalem, ou encore comme dans le Neguev, où ils soutiennent les bédouins expulsés de leurs terres par des opérations d’aménagement urbain. Ce qui leur est reproché par une partie des milieux académiques et, au delà, par la droite israélienne, ce sont leurs positions très critiques contre les politiques menées par le gouvernement israélien: voir par exemple ce site et cet autre. Ces demandes ministérielles, justifiées par un processus d’évaluation largement pipé, suscite néanmoins des réactions de solidarité en Israël, comme sur ce site.

Une campagne de protestation vient d’être lancé. Elle est notamment relayé par le Critical Geography Forum et le géographe Stuart Elden sur son blog Progressive Geography, qui explique qu’il n’a jamais accepté l’idée d’un boycottage académique contre Israël pour soutenir précisement des voix isolées comme celles de Ben Gourion. Il publie par ailleurs une lettre du grand géographe israéelien Oren Yftachel, lui-même à Ben Gourion, qui défend ses collègues et souligne la dimension politique de cette “chasse aux sorcières”. On trouvera sur ce site web (The Israeli Academia Under Attack) la présentation des faits par les universitaires du département de sciences de l’Université Ben Gourion, et une proposition d’action pour défendre la liberté académique.

Je publie ci-dessous la copie du message circulant actuellement sur les listes de diffusion et exposant les tenants de l’affaire.

> From: A forum for critical and radical geographers [mailto:CRIT-GEOG-FORUM@JISCMAIL.AC.UK] On Behalf Of Orzeck, Reecia Sent: Monday, September 17, 2012 4:10 PM To: CRIT-GEOG-FORUM@JISCMAIL.AC.UK Subject: Ben-Gurion University Politics Department threatened with closure Dear geographers, As some of you know, the Department of Politics and Government at Ben Gurion University is home to some of Israel’s most progressive scholars, including two political geographers. These scholars regularly expose and condemn unjust policies and practices within Israel and the Palestinian territories. This department is now in danger of being shut down. Israel’s Council of Higher Education has proposed this, citing the department’s failure to comply with the recommendations of an evaluation committee (to grow mainstream and positivist scholarship and teaching). In fact, the department has already taken substantial steps to comply with the committee’s recommendations despite the inaccuracy of many aspects of its report. As a Haaretz editorial recently put it, “The closure of BGU’s Department of Politics and Government, without allowing more time to fix any remaining deficiencies, gives one the impression that the decision was based not on issues of academic quality but on political considerations.” <http://www.haaretz.com/opinion/politics-in-academia-1.464374> Details of the case can be found in this Haaretz editorial, as well as in the text pasted below. At the end of this email is a list of names and email addresses of some of the people involved in this issue (Council and committee members), as well as others who might be compelled to speak out against the Council’s decision (administrators of Israeli universities). Consider emailing them and letting them know what you think about this transgression against academic freedom. Reecia Orzeck, Ph.D. Assistant Professor Department of Geography-Geology Illinois State University —— The department of Politics and Government at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev is currently under threat of being shut down. This saga began when the Council of Higher Education established an international evaluation committee to scrutinize political science departments in Israel. From the very beginning, the process was mired by irregularities. First, Prof. Ian Lustick, a prominent American political scientist from U of Penn and an internationally recognized expert on Israeli society and politics, was removed from the evaluation committee for unknown reasons. In response, the original committee chair, Prof. Robert Shapiro of Columbia University, resigned and the political science department at Hebrew University stopped cooperating with the committee. The committee was subsequently recomposed with Prof. Thomas Risse from Frei University in Berlin taking the helm (Risse was aware that the other people resigned and still took it on), and included such people as Israeli Prof. Avraham Diskin who had previously written articles in support of the radical right wing group Im Tirzu. This committee, whose members are praised as positivist and empiricist political scientists produced a report that was not only biased but erred on key facts, errors that facilitated its unprecedented conclusion – the department which was established purposefully in order to foster and advance interdisciplinary, critical and qualitative research (the kind of research which is currently under represented in all other political science departments in Israel) was instructed to introduce mainstream positivist political science into its research and curricula. Failing to do so, the Council of Higher Education should consider shutting it down. This evaluation, which was biased both politically and disciplinarily, was also based on basic factual errors. For example: The committee counted only 50% of the referreed articles published by department members. And while criticizing the department at BGU, they praised the department of political science at Tel-Aviv University which published the same amount of articles but have twice as many faculty members. In the original report they erroneously stated that faculty members have not published books in leading academic publishing houses, but the nine full-time faculty have, in fact, published six books in the three years prior to the report, of which three appeared in the top 10 academic publishing houses (California, Cornell, Columbia), two more with Routledge, and a sixth with the top press in France. The excellent quality of scholarship members of the department have produced, and the fact that they are frequent and welcome guest at the best academic institutes (Radcliff College at Harvard, the Institute for Advanced Studies at Princeton, the school of public health at Chicago, or Cambridge University) has found little echo in the report. The committee was also not impressed with the average grant per faculty member, which is over $100,000, a relatively high sum in the discipline, and perhaps the highest among political science departments in Israel. Finally, this fall graduates from the department are beginning their PhDs at universities like Columbia and Northwestern. On the basis of such errors the committee under-evaluated the department in terms of individual merit, and could easily direct its criticism to the “excessive social activism” of its members – which means nothing but their leftist political leaning – and to the interdisciplinary ethos and of the department (where half of the faculty come from fields like political geography, public health, and history). For obvious bureaucratic and political reasons, the administration of Ben Gurion University felt it had to comply with the report and directed the department to hire three faculty members in areas mentioned in the report: comparative politics, quantitative methods and political theory and to introduce some changes to the curriculum. Two international evaluators – Thomas Risse and Ellen M. Immergut, appointed by the Council to oversee the implementation of the report, wrote in a letter sent to the Council that they “congratulate the department on successfully recruiting three new faculty members in the areas of comparative politics, quantitative methods, and political theory, and for its plans for a fourth recruitment next year.” They called upon the University to allow these young scholars “the time, resources, and mentoring to publish in top ranked international refereed journals and university presses,” in a way that would help the department “fulfill its deficits in mainstream political science,” adding that “the department should increase its diversity in terms of methods and theoretical orientations in future recruitments”. No criticism or sanctions were mentioned in this letter. And yet, last week a sub-committee within the Council of Higher Education followed this letter with a proposal to shut down the department because it failed to comply with the report of the international committee. The gap between the report filed by Risse and Immergut and the decision reached by the sub-committee of the Council of Higher Education underscores that this whole “evaluation process” has turned into a witch hunt, or was such a hunt in disguise from the beginning. For reasons which are difficult – or too easy? – to understand, the authors of the abovementioned letter, professors Risse and Immegut, have failed so far to clarify their opinion about the way their service to the Council of Higher Education has been abused so as to silence excellent academics some of whom happen to be identified as active members of the left in Israel. —— Members of the Israeli Council of Higher Education MK Minister Gideon Sa’ar, <mailto:gsaar@knesset.gov.il> Prof. Jacob Vaya, <mailto:vaya@migal.org.il> Dr. Rivka Wadmani Schauman, <mailto:Rivka_wad@smkb.ac.il> Prof. Rosa Azhari, <mailto:razhari@braude.ac.il> Prof. Fadia Nasser, <mailto:fadia@post.tau.ac.il> Prof. Haim Sandberg, <mailto:sahaim@colman.ac.il> Prof. Yonina Eldar, <mailto:yonina@ee.technion.ac.il> Prof. Ezri Tarazi, <mailto:office@tarazistudio.com> Mr. Haim Bibas, <mailto:Haim-bibas@modiin.muni.il> Prof. Manuel Trajtenberg, <mailto:manuel@post.tau.ac.il> Prof. Ella Belfar, <mailto:ella.belfer@biu.ac.il> Prof. Ora Limor, <mailto:orali@openu.ac.il> Prof. Leah Boehm, <mailto:lboehm@iai.co.il> Prof. Moshe Maor, <mailto:msmaor@huji.ac.il> Prof. Rachel Ben-Eliyahu-Zohary, <mailto:rbz@jce.ac.il> Prof. Zilla Sinuany, <mailto:zilla@bgu.ac.il> Prof. Orzion Bartana, <mailto:obartana@netvision.net.il> Prof. Fuad Fares, <mailto:ffares@sci.haifa.ac.il > Ms. Pnina Felago, <mailto:Gadaypninag@hillelisrael.org.il> Mr. Uri Kedar, <mailto:keidar.uri@gmail.com> Prof. Shmuel Hauser, <mailto:shmuelh@isa.gov.il> Prof. Chaya Kalcheim, <mailto:kalcheim@cc.huji.ac.il><mailto:kalcheim@cc.huji.ac.il> Dr. Ofir Haivri, <mailto:ofirh@shalem.org.il> Dr. Shimshon Shoshani, <mailto:shoshaniys@gmail.com> Mr. Itzik Shmuli, <mailto:itzik.shmuli@facebook.com>Head of the international Evaluation CommitteeProf. Thomas Risse, <mailto:thomas.risse@fu-berlin.de>President and Vice-President of the Freie Universität BerlinPresident: Prof. Dr. Peter-André Alt, <mailto:carolin.krehl@fu-berlin.de> Vice President (in charge of political science): Professor Werner Väth, <mailto:vp2@fu-berlin.de>Israeli University Presidents and RectorsHebrew University of Jerusalem President: Prof. Menahem Ben-Sasson, <mailto:hupres@savion.huji.ac.il> Rector: Prof. Sarah Stroumsa, <mailto:rector@savion.huji.ac.il> The Open University of Israel President: Prof. Hagit Messer – Yaron, <mailto:hagitm@openu.ac.il> Vice President for Academic Affairs: Prof. Judith Gal-Ezer, <mailto:galezer@openu.ac.il> University of Haifa President: Prof. Aaron Ben-Ze’ev, <mailto:abenzeev@univ.haifa.ac.il> Rector: David Faraggi, <mailto:faraggi@stat.haifa.ac.il> Technion President: Prof. Peretz Lavie, <mailto:president@technion.ac.il> Tel Aviv University President: Prof. Joseph Klafter, <mailto:klafter@post.tau.ac.il> Rector: Prof. Aron Shai, <mailto:aashai@post.tau.ac.il> Bar-Ilan University President: Prof. Moshe Kaveh, <mailto:President.office@mail.biu.ac.il> Rector: Prof. Haim Taitelbaum, <mailto:haimt@mail.biu.ac.il> Weizmann Institute of Science President: Prof. Daniel Zajfman, <mailto:daniel.zajfman@weizmann.ac.il> Ben-Gurion University of the Negev President: Prof. Rivka Carmi, <mailto:president@bgu.ac.il> Rector: Prof. Zvi HaCohen, <mailto:rector@bgu.ac.il> ‎