Don’t kill the Haredi education revolution

It would be disastrous if the Supreme Court shuts down gender-separate college programs.

BY David M. Weinberg, JPOST

Land mine has been laid against the overall positive momentum in integration of haredi students in higher education. The threat comes from a group of extremist professors who petitioned the Supreme Court (in its capacity as the High Court of Justice) to terminate all government funding for gender-separate college programs for ultra-Orthodox students.

The so-called “liberal” professors argue that the separation into genders in academia harms women’s equality in the workplace because female instructors are not selected to teach haredi male classes. They also warn that such segregation, which they call a “distortion,” could become a precedent for other areas, from the army to the job market. On top of that, they complain that gender separation is an affront to the “fundamentals” of higher education, such as “openness and pluralism.”

This week, unsurprisingly, Haaretz backed the radical professors in a lead editorial.

It is imperative that the High Court reject this dangerous suit. It would be outrageous and calamitous if the High Court shuts down gender-separate college and university programs.

Over the past seven years, the Israeli government wisely has invested hundreds of millions of dollars in higher education study opportunities for haredi men and women – and it’s working! The number of haredi students in college has jumped by more than 80% over this period, to 11,000 each year. And the number of haredi men in the workforce has risen from 40% to 50% over the past decade.

(The employment rate for men is 81% in the non-haredi public. The target set by the government for the inclusion of haredi men in the labor force is 63% by 2020).

In parallel, there seems to be an increasing majority sentiment within Israeli haredi society that embraces higher education and superior employment. Surveys suggest that more than 80% of haredi parents want their high schools to teach secular subjects alongside religious ones.

The reasons for this are clear: Some 60% of this country’s one million haredim live under the poverty line, and 60% are under 20 years of age. Most haredim don’t have a higher education and therefore aren’t qualified for more advanced professions. Thus, even those who are employed work mainly in menial or service jobs, or in low-paying religious professions as scribes, rabbis or teachers, etc.

This situation is crippling for haredi society, and disastrous over the long term for Israel, both economically and in terms of the character of our society.

That is why Israel’s most urgent agenda with its haredi population is not propelling them to the front lines against Hezbollah, but pulling them out of the unemployment benefits lineup; not busing them to Tel Hashomer, but enticing them into higher education and hi-tech work.

In my assessment, it is indisputable that the overwhelming majority of haredim won’t go to study in mixed-gender classrooms at mixed-gender campuses. The mixing of the sexes is too far a stretch for the very conservative and still quite insular haredi society, which has a hard-enough time approaching academic studies in the first place.

Thus, the militant axing of gender-separate programs would haphazardly lead to the exclusion of most haredi men and women from institutions of higher studies. And this would kill the slow but measurable and exciting movement of haredim into the workforce – which again, is crucial for the Israeli economy and the future of our society.

The inevitable conclusion: For all the problems involved, at this time, gender-separate classes and campuses for haredi students are an absolute and reasonable necessity. It is no exaggeration to say that the country’s future depends on it.

IT SHOULD be noted that the Council for Higher Education, and its parent-body Education Ministry, are funding gender-separate study programs for haredi students at the undergraduate level only and not in all fields. In other words, the CHE is making reasonable distinctions and setting limits – which dismisses the concerns expressed about a slippery slope in supporting “segregation.”

The same goes for the workplace. While some very big businesses in Israel have female-only departments, mainly for haredi women, the vast majority of haredim graduating college after studying computers, engineering, accounting, law and business are working in general, mixed-gender environments. There is no “creeping gender segregation” overwhelming Israel as a result of haredi higher education study tracks.

The zealous professors’ petition is also dishonest on substantive grounds. Have they never heard of gender-separate colleges, mainly for women, in that bastion of liberalism and democracy called the United States, such as Mount Holyoke, Smith and Wellesley, for example? Why isn’t this considered discrimination against men, or an “affront to the fundamentals of higher education, such as openness and pluralism” over there?

And if we shut down gender-separate colleges, why not shutter gender-separate high schools too, or gender-separate synagogues, for that matter?

Alas, I strongly suspect that the aggressive opposition to gender-separate study programs for haredi students stems from a deeper, darker and illiberal place. The professors and journalists behind this are, I think, frightened by the prospect of haredi integration into Israeli life and economy.

Of course, this is what they have demanded for decades – that the haredi community get educated and go to work (and serve in the military). But now that it is beginning to happen, they’ve changed their minds.

It is too overwhelming for them, because lo and behold, it seems that haredi people can become engineers and even academics without abandoning haredi values and a conservative lifestyle; and this threatens the ultra-progressive and post-modern paradigm that dominates elite Israeli society.

The “liberal” professors seem to be saying that it is better to leave haredim wallowing in poverty in their medieval ghettos than to help them step out into the modern world. Or, let us force them to abandon their haredi mores altogether as the price for entering the hallowed hallways of Israeli academia.

This is an enormously shortsighted and even fanatic mindset.

Let’s remember that the haredi world, for all its shortcomings and eccentricities, is admirable in important ways: It models modesty, emphasizes family values, prioritizes spiritual aspirations, and accents charitable works. It is less afflicted by the crime, drugs, booze, pornography, sleaze and slavish devotion to imbecility (the hallmark of most TV shows and movies) characteristic of much of modern secular society.

Therefore, I expect that haredi families will yet retain their core values of religious excellence alongside other wholesome values, even as they go to college and work. This should not be feared, but rather welcomed, by the broader Israeli society.

In fact, I pray for greater integration of haredi society on the high end of the Israeli workforce in a way that strengthens, not damages, the conservative values dear to haredi society. My hope is for a healthy process of haredi integration and maturation that will simultaneously preserve and improve haredi society, and perhaps offer new pathways of navigating modernity to Israeli society writ large.

All this might be possible, if the High Court makes the right decision: To affirm the government’s wise investment in educational study tracks for haredim, including gender-separate programs.

The writer is vice president of the Jerusalem Institute for Strategic Studies, jiss.org.il. His personal site is davidmweinberg.com.