A Word from the Chairman – Shalom Zohar
A Word from the Chairman
Dear Friends,
When I wrote to you last spring, we had just barely returned to our normal routine from the pandemic when Israel was thrust into turmoil by the judicial-reform protests. I expressed my hope that the strong bonds our board had developed during the previous two years would help Bar-Ilan weather the new challenge of a deeply divided country. Never could I have imagined that we would need to call upon that strength to help fight an existential battle the likes of which we haven’t seen since our War of Independence.
The difficulties Bar-Ilan faced in the early weeks and months of Operation Swords of Iron were serious and often unprecedented, even in a country as used to war as Israel. Thousands of students or their spouses were called up to the reserves, and many wondered how they would manage to pay their tuition after months of lost wages. Others were displaced from their homes and are still coping with profound uncertainty. Our researchers and staff—some of whom were themselves called up for duty, and many more of whom have children in uniform—were tasked with teaching and assisting students who had just returned from battle, with all the psychological and academic challenges that presents. To meet these audiences’ needs, we worked together to ensure that every soldier-student received a scholarship he could apply to tuition, housing, or psychological support. We also provided free emotional-support services to our entire community through a hotline manned by expert faculty. Most important, we created an “education command center” to ensure that the full range of issues, from testing to teaching in wartime to preventing tensions on campus, were addressed preemptively. These and other measures ensured our ability to remain resilient in the face of tragedy.
Yet there were still other challenges the war presented, among them the financial consequences of lower enrollment and fewer research outputs—a problem experienced by all Israeli institutions of higher education. Fortunately, our good planning allowed us not only to maintain a balanced budget despite these exceptional circumstances, but also to facilitate new innovations and discoveries on the part of our outstanding faculty.
Indeed, our emphasis on academic excellence, both on the part of existing faculty and from our new recruits, is a major part of our newfound success. Not for nothing are we the fastest-growing university for six years in a row: Students want to learn from the best, and in the place where truly exciting things are happening. And thanks to our commitment to upgrading the physical campus—by renovating facilities’ libraries and building a digital infrastructure for the 21st century—they can learn in a beautiful, modern environment, as well.
Having successfully secured our activities during the first six months of war, we are now taking steps to become an even more advanced university. We are, for example, protecting against cyber-attacks so that nothing can take our learning offline or jeopardize our institution’s functioning. We are also strengthening our corporate governance through the expertise and participation of every member of our board’s various committees. Finally, we are transitioning to new, smarter methods of management in the realms of marketing, instruction, and administration through the application of AI.
Achieving these goals against the backdrop of war will add additional layers of complexity. But there is no question that we will achieve them, just as there is no question of Israel’s ultimately obtaining victory. As we have shown throughout the last seven years, while implementing our ten-year strategic plan, we are an institution that is undaunted by challenges and ready to use best practices to face what the future brings our way. To quote Bar-Ilan’s tagline, we are impacting tomorrow, today.
Shlomo Zohar
Chairman, Permanent Committee