Special Interview the Hebrew University is Still Going Strong at 60

The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel’s largest and most renowned institution of higher learning, is alive and well and celebrating its 60th anniversary this year.

Despite the country’s severe economic crisis, the university continues with more than 2,500 research programs, and the rate of student enrollment continues to grow. This year, some 30,000 students are attending the university, 17,000 of them studying toward academic degrees and the rest in various programs offered by the university.

“This is a far cry from the less than 100 students the university had when it was established on April 1,1925, ” Bernard Cherrick, vice president of the Hebrew University said in an interview here. He noted that when he joined the university in 1947, there were only 900 students there.

Cherrick, who was elected vice president in 1968, said that the university on Mount Scopus has been a major contributor to the scientific, cultural and social life of Israel and the Jewish people around the world.

REPUTED FOR ITS VARIOUS DEPARTMENTS

Even today, when Israel has a number of other universities, the Hebrew University is the only one that has a faculty of agriculture, a school of pharmacy and a librarian school, Cherrick said. Later this year, he added, the university will inaugurate a veterinary school. “This will be the first and only school of its kind in Israel, ” he said. “It will end the need to send Israeli students to study veterinary medicine abroad.”

Ironically, despite the precarious state of the Israeli economy, the Hebrew University continues to have a reputation for maintaining one of the best economic departments of any university in the world, Cherrick said. It is also reputed for its mathematics and archaeology departments, and has the largest department of Jewish studies worldwide, he noted.

FEELS PINCH OF ECONOMIC CRISIS

Although the economic crisis in the country did not affect the enrollment of new students, the university feels the pinch of hard economic times, Cherrick said. He pointed out that the Israeli government cut its support of the $100 million yearly budget of the university from 75 to 65 percent this year.

“This will have a certain affect on the fellowships we have been giving to students for second and third degrees,” he noted. Another area that will suffer, he pointed out, will be the purchase of new equipment — mainly for the sciences –he said, as well as books — many of them very expensive and out of reach for the average Israeli student — for the university’s libraries.

Tuition, which is $600 a year per student, amounts to five percent of the budget, while the Friends of the Hebrew University around the world, especially in the United States, raise about 35 percent of the budget, Cherrick said.

CITES A MAJOR CHALLENGE

One of the developments in recent years, Cherrick said, is the growing number of Jewish students who come to study at the university from all over the world.

“I see it as a major challenge for the Hebrew University to cater to Jewish students from abroad,” he said, adding that last year alone there were more than 2,000 Jewish students enrolled in what is known as the Overseas Studies program. Many of the students enroll in the regular degree programs at the university after the first year during which they enjoy the benefits of being taught in their own language — English, Spanish or French.

The university is also known for having a large community of Israeli Arab students. According to Cherrick, there are presently about 1,000 such students attending the university. Many of them live in the students’ dormatories, mingling with the other students.

Cherrick conceded that there has been some tension between Arab and Jewish students on the campus. He said that tension flares usually when the political situation in the Mideast is tense, or when hostilities between Arabs and Israelis occur. He said the university allows the Arab students to hold nationalistic meetings on campus, “but only indoors, not in open areas.”

LOOKING AHEAD

What are the major challenges for the university in the future?

Cherrick replied, “In my view, the challenges for the next 20 years are the same in principle as they were when the university was established, although the subjects are different. ” The challenges today are in the fields of research and science, Cherrick said, noting that the university “started as a research institute” then turned and opened its doors to undergraduate students in line with the needs of the country.

But now, with other universities in Israel, the emphasis will be shifted once again to research — in the fields of energy and science, to help Israel develop science-based industries, Cherrick said. He said that science can help Israel develop industry and put it on the road to economic recovery.