A contribution of $1 million to Tel Aviv University toward the establishment of a new center for technological studies was made last week by Leonard Rosen. president of the American Friends of Tel Aviv University, at that organization’s annual dinner. Mr. Rosen, a resident of Miami, Fla, is also deputy chairman of the university’s board of governors.
Contributions of $500,000 to the University’s scholarship fund were reported by Eugene Ferkauf of New York, chairman of a special leadership committee which has been soliciting this form of support. More than 700 friends and supporters of the Tel Aviv institution attended the function at which honorary fellowship awards were made to Herman Stein and William Levi.
Gov. Frank Licht of Rhode Island, who recently visited Israel with a party of governors, told the assemblage that the interests of the United States in the Middle East were tied to the survival of Israel, He declared that “Russia cannot make peace in the Middle East. The U.S. cannot make peace in the Middle East. France and Britain cannot make peace in the Middle East.” He described as an “Alice in Wonderland situation” the fact that Israel, the victor in three wars, has to ask the Arab states, the defeated, to sit down and negotiate peace, and that the Arab states have refused.
Dr. George S. Wise, president of Tel Aviv University, warned that unless Israel can bring the number of its university students up to 70,000 and triple the number of science students, it will fall behind the Arab states in technological manpower. He cited the rapidly increasing number of Arab students in universities in Arab countries and abroad and declared that “we are no longer dealing with felaheen but with a generation of young, well-educated people.”
In the long run, he said, Israel’s security and welfare depend on the development of science and technology. He pleaded for support for all of Israel’s higher institutions of learning and urged their expansion so that they can receive ever increasing numbers of students, In stressing the need for Israel to maintain its technological lead, Dr. Wise declared that a center for technological studies would be established at Tel Aviv University such as existed, he said, at only two other universities in the world.
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The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
