On October 8, 2023, I was on the steps of the Widener library in Harvard, participating in a vigil for the victims of the Hamas terrorist attack. I am a full professor of Israeli American, and I felt that it was my duty to defend Jewish and Israeli students. I helped organize An open letter denouncing anti -Semitism. I am a member of the Harvard presidential working group on the fight against anti-Semitism and anti-Israeli prejudices. I have written many blog articles and opinion articles on this subject.
In my class, I did not discuss these questions at all. I am a computer teacher and the students take my courses to learn the fundamental capacities and the limits of computer devices. The students of my class have been on both sides of the campus are divided. Two of them asked for more leniency in academic assignments because of their involvement in campus activism, one with a Jewish organization, the other with a Muslim. I refused them both.
Why is it important? An assignment on Boolean circuits is clearly less important than the fight against campus anti -Semitism, not to mention the humanitarian disaster in Gaza. But the value I want to encourage is professionalism. When we erod the boundaries between the academic and the political, we finally harm both.
A decade ago recently, a majority of Republicans said that they had “a lot or a lot of confidence” in higher education, According to a Gallup survey. This share was decreasing to 20% last year. Confidence in higher education has also decreased among Democrats. It is a tragedy, because we need the development of policies based on facts and sciences for subjects such as public health and climate change, artificial intelligence and the economy.
Nothing justifies the university’s university administration against universities as a whole and on my institution especially. I am proud of the leadership of Harvard to withstand the impossible requirements to make it. I also believe that these attacks are activated by the lack of popular support for universities. We, academics, must see how we have contributed to this erosion of confidence by allowing the vagueness of borders between scholarships and activism.
In recent years, the mantra of Bring all your self to work replaced the old concept that you should leave everything at the door. This movement had positive results. Ensure that everyone feels included and has access to Mentors and models Can be crucial to attract and keep talents.
Some have taken it too far, leaving the staff and the politically exceeding the professional, which led to the pressure on companies to take positions in questions outside their field. Corporate software manufacturers have weighed on elections. Google employees staged a sit-in On Gaza. Right activists began a boycott de Bud Light after being presented in the promotional publication of social media of a transgender influencer. The result is that people who do not agree with each other have trouble working in the same company or buying the same products, increasing the problem of polarization.
If there is one thing on which the extreme left and the right agree, it is that everything is political. In universities, we see more of the left variety. At the Harvard Law School on October 10, 2023, a teaching scholarship holder told students: “I tried to normalize the practice of bringing it from all your identity and ideologies to the law and class”, then invited them to join a vigil of solidarity with the Palestinians. I couldn’t disagree – and I would say the same on the students’ invitation to a vigil for the Israelis. We must not normalize the contribution of its ideology in class. (The Professor of the Law Course later declared to the students that he had not authorized the e-mail.)
On the far right, the same idea took place in the government, where the very notion of a non -partisan official is threatened, and those deemed insufficiently faithful have been dismissed. The two versions, on the left and right, are toxic.
You might think that I can avoid class in class only because I am a computer scientist. This is not the case. The members of the faculty who are sufficiently determined can inject policy into any subject, and after all, IT has brought Enormous and significant changes to society. The interaction of computer science and politics sometimes occurs in my lessons, and I make sure to present several perspectives. When I teach cryptography, a subject at the heart of the tension between private life and security, I share with my students writings by former officials of the National Security Agency as well as “The crypto anarchist manifesto. “”
In fact, I believe that the lessons that students learn from computer science (and sciences in general) can make them better citizens. Trying and not solving difficult problems teaches students that there is something like an objective truth and our first attempts to find it are often wrong.
IT is an intrinsically collaborative company. Throughout my career, I worked with Iranians and Israelis, Russians and Ukrainians, believers and atheists, gays and heteros, Republicans and Democrats. By working in the field, you learn the advantages of collaborating with people from variable backgrounds and how to put aside disagreements to focus on the task to be accomplished.
I believe that university education in the humanities and sciences can make students of better citizens through spirit habits. When ideology infiltrates education, it has the opposite effect. I prefer that my fellow citizens understand why it is bad to kidnap babies and grandmothers than to speak fluently the subtleties of postcolonialism.
All academics are experts on narrow subjects. Even when they meet with the real world, our expertise in fact does not give us authority over politics. Scientific research shows that vaccines work and that climate change is real, but it cannot dictate whether vaccines should be compulsory or limited fossil fuels. These are decisions for the public, scientific evidence being a factor. When academics demand authority over politics, the result is not an increased effect on politics but a decrease in confidence in the academic world.
A large majority of faculty members do not try to continue a political program. They are busy doing the work of education and research that has made the desire for American universities in the world and the engine of our prosperity. Unfortunately, some members of the faculty may have a disproportionate influence on how universities are perceived and provide ammunition to those who want to see them destroyed.
No campus activist denied as much to research and educational mission as the recent actions of the government. But these actions make American academics more urgent to intensify the work expected for a long time to restore confidence in universities.