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Published in Yediot Achronot - July 26, 2013
Personal Column: Sever Plocker
2. The Academy for the Humanities
Many countries are aware of the crisis in the humanities. In France, a state commission of inquiry headed by Pierre Laskier has just published two volumes of recommendations to promote France’s “cultural uniqueness.” Although the bulk of the recommendations relate to the transition to the digital era, including a recommendation to impose a 1 percent culture tax on all instruments used for surfing the Internet, they express a heartrending lament on the sad state of the humanities in France and a plea for immediate change.
In the United States, a special committee made up of professors, heads of NGOs and foundations, writers, businesspeople, and retired politicians has been established to promote the humanities. The committee recently published an exhaustive report titled “The Heart of the Matter.” “In aspiring to create a public cultural discourse, a creative and flexible work force, and a more secure nation, we view humanities as having a decisive role,” the report states. “They are the gatekeeper of the republic, they are the source of national memory, civil initiative, cultural understanding, communications, and the shared ideals of all of us.” Among the committee’s recommendation was investing large amounts of public money to give the citizens of the United States a broad education in history, civics, logical thinking, and world culture.
And what is happening in Israel? A few years ago Amos Shapira, then the president of Cellcom and today the president of the University of Haifa, declared his intention to get the CEOs of the large companies to sign an agreement stating that they would hire people with advanced degrees in the humanities. Shapira, a tireless visionary, succeeded in obtaining the written commitment of twenty leading companies. In practice, few of them, if any, fulfilled their commitment; since then, not one job announcement has begun with the words “seeking a philosopher” or “seeking a linguist” or even “seeking a historian.” The public-government employment sector has completely ignored the agreement and has put no effort into making its job openings available to holders of MAs and PhDs in the humanities, except in education.
The centrality of Israel in Jewish spiritual life is now but a fading memory. In the 1960s, the Hebrew University of Jerusalem was a world leader in areas including philosophy, history, logic, and Jewish studies. To hear the lectures of the historian Prof. Jacob Talmon or of the philosopher Prof. Hugo Bergmann, or of Prof. Yeshayahu Leibowitz in Jewish studies, one had to grab a seat hours in advance.
“Since then,” Dr. Leonard Polonsky tells me with a sorrowful sigh, “all the universities in Israel want to become the Technion.” Polonsky, an investor and Jewish philanthropist who lives in London, donated more than $45 million to build and run the Polonsky Academy for Advanced Studies in the Humanities [and Social Sciences], which was inaugurated in Jerusalem this month.
The academy, which is affiliated with the veteran Van Leer Jerusalem Institute, will host dozens of young scholars who have already received and will receive the generous Polonsky fellowship: NIS 800,000 each. “I want the young PhDs in the humanities to be able to devote themselves entirely to completing their research and their books without having to struggle with making a living and without having to take on work that does not contribute to their intellectual horizon,” Polonsky explains. The demand for fellowships, he says, is overwhelming: ten times the planned number.
Dr. Polonsky, 86, was born in the United States and served in its army. He studied in Great Britain and settled there. He controls Hansard Global Plc, a financial services company, listed on the London stock exchange. The company develops and manages long-term savings portfolios, through life insurance policies, for international clients, “while taking advantage of tax breaks,” as he puts it. Thanks to Hansard’s conservative and selective investment policy, its profits grew substantially during the crisis but have shrunk in the past two years.
Polonsky is married to Dr. Georgette Bennett, a journalist and sociologist of Jewish-Hungarian descent. The philanthropic foundation that the couple manages has donated and continues to donate large sums also to British universities, as a counterbalance to Arab donations and sometimes in cooperation with them.
I wrote at length about the cornerstone-laying of the Academy of the Humanities in the summer of 2010. In an intimate conversation Polonsky told me then, “I make money in order to donate it. Donating is the raison d’être of my financial dealings, and actually of everything I do. I donate, therefore I am.”
Since then the building has been completed. It is outstanding both in its beauty and in its clever use of climatic and environmental advantages. Prof. Gabriel Motzkin, the chairman of the Van Leer Jerusalem Institute, who initiated the project, will serve as the academic president of the new center. Israeli universities are focusing their efforts in attracting faculty and raising funds in the natural sciences, the exact sciences, technology, and computers. The options for an academic career in the humanities, Polonsky admits, are very limited, and in the absence of a national program of support, they will shrink even more. “Even my academy,” he says, “will not on its own reverse the trend of retreat [from the humanities]. At most, it will slow it down.”
If Polonsky had donated NIS 200 million to build a new wing in a hospital or a sophisticated lab in brain science his name would be broadcast by the media and by politicians. TV channels would devote precious broadcast minutes to his enterprise. But the Academy for Advanced Studies in the Humanities? Who in the startup nation cares about that? Nevertheless, Polonsky is happy. “At my advanced age,” he says with a captivating smile, “it is a great joy to see the conclusion of a job that you’ve begun.”