A few days from now, when students of the Faculty of Humanities enter their lecture halls at the Hebrew University, they will discover that some of their teachers have disappeared from their familiar surroundings. When they ask where they are, they will be told that the university was forced to cut more than a hundred faculty positions for teachers and lecturers due to budgetary constraints.
For years now, the academic world in Israel has been following in the footsteps of market forces, sometimes to adapt to them, often to mold the future of society. Today, high tech is the Israeli economy’s mark of distinction. Its unusual flowering sprouted from special military intelligence units that recruited the best and the brightest young men and women. On their way to achieving military superiority over enemy forces, these young people launched daring, state-of-the-art technological developments. After completing their military service, they pursued studies to advance them along the path on which they had begun in the army.