The Review: Donor Corruption in Israel Studies

When money talks, academic freedom walks. ADVERTISEMENT [The Review Logo]( Did someone forward you this newsletter? [Sign up free]( to receive your own copy. The severe hiring contraction in both the humanities and the social sciences has been good for at least one field — Israel studies, rich with external funding in a buyer’s market. As Mari Cohen [explains]( in Jewish Currents, that’s resulted in an influx of talent that might otherwise have gone elsewhere. Cohen quotes Arie Dubnov, who holds the Max Ticktin chair in Israel studies at George Washington University: “Scholars are finishing Ph.D.s from the best universities in the world, and there are no jobs” in other departments. So if you’re a scholar of Jewish and Israeli culture and history you’ll end up, if you’re lucky, like the University of Washington historian Liora Halperin, who holds the Jack and Rebecca Benaroya endowed chair in Israel studies. Well, “lucky.” As the Temple University professor of Jewish history Lila Corwin Berman [described]( in the Review this year, such endowed chairs can turn out to have strings attached. Halperin discovered as much when, having signed a statement criticizing Israel for military activity in Gaza, Rebecca Benaroya, then 99 years old, negotiated with the university to rescind the endowment. Halperin kept her job and her salary, but she lost the research funding that the original endowment conferred. Cohen’s investigation offers a nuanced history of a field that has been especially vulnerable to conflicts between funders and the freedom of scholarly inquiry. But Israel studies is hardly alone. As Zachary Lockman, a historian of the Middle East at NYU, tells Cohen, “The Turkish government put money into chairs at Princeton and other universities, and the people in those chairs didn’t say much about the Armenian genocide.” Last year, Yale’s famed Grand Strategy program made headlines when its director, the historian Beverly Gage, [resigned]( from her position over interference from donors. In response, President Peter Salovey promised to give “new and careful consideration to how we can reinforce our fundamental commitment to academic freedom in our engagement with donors.” Last month, as the Yale Daily News [reports]( a committee formed for the purpose submitted its [recommendations]( to Salovey, who promised to carry out many of them. The committee drily notes that “generous benefaction can sometimes give rise to unwelcome expectations.” Its recommendations are many and specific, but all are meant to enshrine “the fullest degree of intellectual freedom” as the university’s “central purpose,” to which other considerations must always yield. Similar sets of recommendations might especially benefit fields like Israel studies, buoyed by generous donor funding but damaged by political conditions attached to that funding. Policies around donations must of course be universitywide, but I see no reason why individual departments should not articulate their own norms, too. They could call them “Benaroya rules.” Read Mari Cohen’s “The Fight for the Future of Israel Studies” [here]( and Lila Corwin Berman’s “When Gifts Come With Strings Attached” [here](. ADVERTISEMENT SUBSCRIBE TO THE CHRONICLE Enjoying the newsletter? [Subscribe today]( for unlimited access to essential news, analysis, and advice. The Latest THE REVIEW | OPINION [Fossil-Fuel Money Is Warping Climate Research]( By Craig Callender [STORY IMAGE]( Universities must require researchers to disclose their funders. ADVERTISEMENT THE REVIEW | ESSAY [I’m a Conservative. I’m Dismayed by Right-Wing Campus Activists.]( By Jonathan Marks [STORY IMAGE]( A populist conservatism that bears an uncomfortable resemblance to McCarthyism confronts colleges. THE REVIEW | OPINION [When Financial Aid Contributes to Racial Inequity]( By Phillip Levine [STORY IMAGE]( The FAFSA doesn’t count all assets — and that benefits white students. THE REVIEW | ESSAY [Stop Weaponizing History]( By Arjun Appadurai [STORY IMAGE]( Right and left are united in a vulgar form of historicism. Recommended - “Like Rohmer’s heroine in L’Ami de mon amie, who pronounces that she is not made ‘pour la grande ville, ni pour la province,’ Ernaux thrives on this suburban in-betweenness.” That’s Lauren Elkin in Lit Hub [on Annie Ernaux]( winner of the 2022 Nobel Prize for literature. (From 2021.) - “Behind the insipid prose and rigorously squeegeed façade, there hides a secret self flaming with resentment and rage, grudges held and scores to settle.” In TNYRB, [Joshua Cohen on Jared Kushner’s memoir](. - “Is it ‘morbid’ to be as fascinated as I am by other people’s suffering? To be awed by it? Will I ever stop asking myself this stupid question? Do real journalists ask it?” Helen Garner, who has been happily discovered by a new generation of readers, [is in The Paris Review with some new diary entries.]( - “I tell myself that if I can remember the name of Louis-Ferdinand Céline’s companion, a dancer, we’ll sleep together. I remember, it’s Lucette Almanzor.” Another diarist in The Paris Review (this past spring): [Annie Ernaux]( Nobelist. Write to me at len.gutkin@chronicle.com. Yours, Len Gutkin FROM THE CHRONICLE STORE [Diverse Leadership for a New Era - The Chronicle Store]( [Diverse Leadership for a New Era]( Diversity in leadership can help support colleges’ mission as enrollments of low-income and minority students increase. [Order your copy today]( to explore whether colleges are meeting goals they set following the 2020 racial justice movement and implementing best practices to recruit and support an inclusive administration. NEWSLETTER FEEDBACK [Please let us know what you thought of today's newsletter in this three-question survey](. This newsletter was sent to {EMAIL}. [Read this newsletter on the web](. [Manage]( your newsletter preferences, [stop receiving]( this email, or [view]( our privacy policy. © 2022 [The Chronicle of Higher Education]( 1255 23rd Street, N.W. Washington, D.C. 20037