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I. The Starting Point

The agenda formulated and presented on the eve of my election as Tel Aviv University President was predicated on a concept of the University's character, quality and status and on a set of goals:

1. Over a period of some forty years, the University's founders, leaders and faculty had registered remarkable accomplishments and had constructed a most impressive edifice. Within a relatively brief span, TAU became Israel's largest and most influential university, and in many areas an excellent university in Israeli and international terms. TAU's reputation has derived from three principal sources:
   1. Excellence in a number of scientific and academic areas.
   Professional schools in such areas as management, business, law, medicine and engineering.
   2. Research institutes and academic think tanks with status and impact in Israel and in the Jewish world and other international arenas.


2. The campus had been built up (with a number of well-defined exceptions) and, at the same time, the government capped student enrollment. It was clear that preference had to be assigned to academic over physical development.



3. In financial and budgetary terms, the University was thinly spread. In the 1990s, the annual budgets were balanced or nearly balanced (in the summer of 1999 in preparing for the budget year beginning on October 1, 1999, a deficit of NIS 40 million was apparent). The University had a relatively small endowment, a large actuarial debt, no income from intellectual property and its fundraising lagged behind that of its three "older sisters." The tasks were clear: improve fundraising, generate income from intellectual property, adapt the University's operational patterns to the government's funding policies and bring in more research money, primarily from competitive sources.



4. This last point was closely related to the issue of TAU's scientific/academic standards. TAU's standing and positioning were determined by a group of first-rate departments, but these were, to some extent, compromised by weaker departments and mediocre averages in a number of important variables (doctoral candidates and scholarships, competitive research money, much too generous policy on tenure).



5. Governance and administration. It was clear that the University's administration was in need of renewal and change and that a constitutional governance reform was called for. The latter issue was closely related to the debate that was soon to develop in the national arena ("the Maltz Commission") and to a number of fundamental questions of university life, such as the faculty's role in managing the institution. Yet it was clear that, short of causing turmoil over familiar issues (the relationship between the President and the Rector, size and role of the Senate), several structural changes were called for (role and size of the Israeli Executive Council, the composition and role of the International Board of Governors, the role of the faculty deans).
   These issues were not unique to Tel Aviv University. Since the "big strike" at Israel's universities and the new wage agreement with faculty in 1994, the leaders of the Finance Ministry's powerful budget department had been pressing for far-reaching changes in the universities' governance. They argued that the familiar pattern based on full fledged or partial duality - the existence of paralleled, academic and administrative hierarchies, academic "sovereignty" of the Senate, election of officers by the faculty - was an insurmountable obstacle to proper and efficient management of the universities. Their pressure led to the formation of the Maltz Commission (to be discussed in detail below) and was, so it transpired later, one of the important forces that led in the late 1990s and early in the next decade to profound changes in Israel's higher education system.



6. TAU's branding - an issue closely connected to fundraising. It was commonly known that TAU was seen as an excellent, influential and "prestigious" (not to say elitist) university in Israel, but was not sufficiently well known (and regarded) in the Jewish communities in North America and Western Europe - the principal sources of donations for the Israeli universities' academic and physical development. This was an important reason - though not the only one - for the discrepancy between the funds raised by TAU and those raised by older (and better branded) institutions.



7. In Israel, by contrast, TAU was perceived as both excellent and "elitist," with admission (particularly in lucrative and popular fields) being beyond the reach of most. Among students and candidates, the University was seen as haughty, tough and not "user friendly." The University's location in the heart of Israel's main metropolitan area and the small number of dormitory rooms worked against the development of campus life and "a campus experience." The size of the faculty (around 1,400 senior faculty) and its work habits were an obstacle to the emergence of the University's wider sense of belonging and loyalty.



8. TAU was not only Israel's largest university but its most diverse one - with nine faculties ranging from the hard sciences to the performing arts. This could have led to shapelessness and inefficient use of resources or, managed properly, to the further evolution of a diverse campus boasting inter- and multidisciplinary teaching and research programs in the full sense of these terms.



9. A significant weakness of the University concerned its international exposure. The University's academic offerings were enriched by two very successful international programs, the New York State/American Program in Medicine and the Kellogg-Recanati International MBA, and a somewhat less successful School for Overseas Students. The University also had a number of effective cooperation agreements with foreign universities but the overall number of foreign professors, post-doctoral fellows and students in a campus of 30,000 students was by far too small.

From this foundation an initial plan of action was put together:

1. Setting goals and priorities for academic development to reinforce existing centers of excellence, to develop new and novel areas of teaching and research, and to build interdisciplinary programs that take advantage of the campus's richness and diversity. Fundraising for new buildings was given low priority, except for such research structures as SPF and FMRI. High priority was given to mobilizing resources for building and operating a mechanism for external academic review (such reviews had occurred previously on a sporadic basis). For this purpose, a donation was raised and put at the disposal of the Rector for creating and running an external review system for the academic units.



2. Reorganizing Ramot, TAU's technology transfer corporation. Ramot had been in existence for three decades and had some sources of revenue (publication of high school textbooks, industrial services and, for a few years, a "privatized" law school), but in sharp contrast to the Weizmann Institute and the Hebrew University's comparable corporations, Ramot had almost no revenues from intellectual property. It is difficult to overstate the importance of income from this source, which reduces the University's dependence on government allocations and places at the administration's disposal unrestricted funds for academic development. Needless to say, while seeking to create a steady stream of revenues from intellectual property, the University's leadership must preserve the centrality of basic research and to prevent too sharp a tilt by the faculty to applied research.
   
   In any event, and for reasons that cannot be elaborated here, the impressive volume of applied research on campus had not been translated into revenues for TAU. Suffice it to say that, on the eve of my assumption of office, an Israeli company that grew out of the Faculty of Engineering at TAU was bought by a major US corporation for hundreds of millions of dollars, without TAU receiving a penny (though eventually a $ 1 million donation was made as a good-will gesture). In order to improve this state of affairs, a leading Israeli expert in this field, who was willing to resign his post at NYC, came to TAU to rebuild Ramot. A few years later, new by-laws were adopted by TAU to regulate and clarify the issues of patents and intellectual property.



3. For obvious reasons, I decided to invest my major effort in building an infrastructure and in fundraising in the US: The following table offers an overview of TAU's fundraising, worldwide and in the US in earlier years:
   
   

   Year	U.S. ($ M)	Total ($ M)
   1980/81	1.9	9.4
   1985/86	6.4	17.6
   1988/89	10.2	20.7
   1994/95	8.5	35.5

   
   The table points to a clear weakness in the US - the main source of donations for other Israeli universities. The US is a unique arena combining a singular accumulation of wealth with laws and regulations conducive to philanthropy. Beside taking advantage of my network of acquaintances in the US, several measures were called for and taken - personnel changes in the lay leadership and professional staff; changing the traditional-sounding name, American Friends of Tel Aviv University (AFTAU), to the Tel Aviv University: American Council (TAUAC) to appeal to a new, younger generation of donors and activists; the establishment of Boards of Trustees for professional schools and research institutes; and introducing some of the Jewish community's most prominent lay and business leaders to TAU. The impact of these changes over time is illustrated on the table on page 30.



4. Early on, three major contributions were raised in order to develop three new schools. Two of them were conceived as "virtual" in that they were not meant to be created through the recruitment of additional faculty but rather be based on existing faculty members and other resources clustered together in new configurations.
   
   1. The Porter School of Environmental Studies (PSES), established through a new $10 million gift (augmented in 2007 to facilitate the construction of a building for the school).
   2. The Harold Hartog School of Government and Policy, based on a similar gift.
   3. The Georges Leven High-Tech Management School (HTMS), established at the Faculty of Management to help train senior managers for Israel's high-tech sector. The gift for initiating operations came from the Sacta-Rashi Foundation and the school was named after Georges Leven, father of the current head of the family, whose unusual generosity underlies the activities of this foundation. Unfortunately the school failed, primarily due to the crisis of Israeli high-tech as well as other reasons. In any event, the school was closed. The vacuum has been filled to some extent by a new institute, the BRM Institute for the Study of Technology and Society, which is also supported by the Sacta-Rashi Foundation.


5. A special effort was invested in developing programs for community outreach and social involvement and in opening the campus to students from underprivileged areas and sectors. TAU's elitist image and its location in Ramat Aviv called for a new approach and for changes in substance and image that would bring to the campus students from Israel's periphery. A large donation from the Price-Brodie Foundation in San Diego enabled us to launch a large-scale program in Jaffa. The Landa Center for Equality through Education and the Sivan Center for Community Initiative were founded later. A dynamic unit for science cadets in the School of Education became the focal point of numerous programs which coalesced in 2007 into a "Youth University." A "Presidential Scholars" program was launched that offered scholarships and mentoring to students admitted through TAU's affirmative action policy. More recently, an innovative program was launched at the Law School (a particularly competitive school), under which a number of students were admitted not on the basis of their matriculation grades and "psychometric test" scores, but rather on their ranking in their high school class. Once it had sailed successfully through the experimental phase, the program was expanded in Law and adopted by other faculties as well. Generous grants by the Legacy Foundation and other donors provide the students with scholarships.



6. With regard to a constitutional-governance reform, I decided to wait until the latter part of my second term (on the assumption that there would be one). My decision derived from the recognition that any such reform would:
   1. entail a significant empowerment of the office of the president; and
   2. encounter strong opposition by a large part of the faculty.
      
   It would thus be much easier to effect the reform toward the end of my term when it would be more likely to be perceived as a measure designed for the next administration rather than as an exercise in self empowerment.



7. The university's leadership decided to postpone action with regard to another important issue - new faculty members' transition from budgetary pensions to an external pension plan. This was and remains one of the most difficult problems facing Israel's higher education system. It developed over decades during which the faculty in Israel's older universities (and in some cases - though not at Tel Aviv - administrative staff as well) were employed on the basis of a budgetary pension. This misguided policy was encouraged for a while by the government, which relished the short-term advantage of saving the resources that would otherwise have to be allocated to building pension plans. The faculty was enamored of the comparatively generous terms of the budgetary pension plan. Only in the mid-1990s did the Ministry of Finance, the universities' leadership and part of the faculty realize that this was a ticking time bomb that had already created large actuarial debts and threatened to undermine the universities' current budgets. TAU's faculty union agreed to enter into negotiations on the matter, but insisted that the negotiation not be completed prior to the conclusion of a more advanced negotiation between the Hebrew University and its faculty. Unfortunately, we agreed and realized only later that this was a serious error (see below).



8. Another important development occurred in 2000 at the initiative of a home-based business entrepreneur and philanthropist, one of TAU's most significant donors. Dan David decided to create a $100 million foundation to finance a new international prize offering three $1 million prizes annually in three "time dimensions" - past, present and future. David proposed that TAU and I personally build and manage the prize. I gladly accepted with two provisos:
   1. that 10% of each prize be allocated to advanced students and young scholars in the fields in which the prizes were given that year (most but not all the recipients have been from TAU)
   2. that the foundation allocate additional money to cover most of its current expenses.
   Within a short span of time the prize, with an international board and headquartered at TAU, was established and activated. The first prizes were given in 2001. The Dan David Prize is an impressive, valuable enterprise in its own right. For TAU it offers several important advantages: prestige and greater international exposure, new relationships with scientists, academics, artists and institutions across the globe, visits on campus by winners and judges, and scholarships.
   
   In 2006, the French government, through its Ministry of Culture and Communication, became our partner in this project. It was agreed that the prize would remain headquartered at TAU and that French representatives would join the board and the selection panels. The award ceremony will alternate between Paris and Tel Aviv. The first Paris award ceremony was held in the Opera Garnier in March 2007, while several other activities are scheduled for the mid-May annual session of the International Board of Governors in Tel Aviv.

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