Author: p_c_neary@hotmail.com

If you keep up with the news, you probably know that the current ultra-right government of Benjamin Netanyahu (aka Bibi) is trying to turn Israel into a fascist state by eliminating the independence of the Israeli Supreme Court. The opposition has delivered large crowds, huge protests, a threatened (rather promised) general strike, and even some resignations among the Israeli military’s famed reserve forces. Democracy hangs in the balance, as Bibi presses forward.

Of course, all that is a caricature of what’s really happening, which is far deeper and actually more profound. Democracy has nothing to do with it, as I will explain. This is a debate about the what Israel is and what it should be, one that has been simmering since it was born in conflict in 1948.

Israel has a fairly pure representative democracy. That is, it has only one legislature (the Knesset), designed to form governments by either a straight majority vote of the people or a coalition-building political process. No one is questioning that. Israel also has a Supreme Court which is independent of the elected government. Its members are chosen by a committee of nine: four representing the sitting government (two Knesset, two from the Prime Minister’s cabinet) and five lawyers (three sitting Supreme Court Justices and two members of the Israeli Bar Association) It takes seven votes to select a nominee, who then must be approved by Israel’s ceremonial President. In practice, Israel’s highest legal body selects itself.

The Israeli Supreme Court staked out its authority to review government actions and policies much like the US Supreme Court did in Marbury v. Madison. One interesting difference is the Israeli Supreme Court decided that one criterion it could use to overrule the government was “reasonableness.” While that sounds reasonable, try defining it in a consistent, coherent way. It didn’t prove to be an immediate problem until the last few years, when the court overturned policies and even prohibited the government from choosing a specific cabinet minister. In any event, the Israeli Supreme Court acted as a check on the government, and some would say the only check on it.

Remember now that the Israeli Knesset is a democratic body, both in how it is selected and how it acts. And the court is a check on it. Got it? Which is why this is not about democracy.

Lately, the Knesset has had an unstable series of short-term governments, as the Israeli electorate is evenly divided between liberal/progressive and conservative factions. As in most parliamentary systems, there are numerous small, often-extreme parties which can play the role of king-maker (or more appropriately, Prime Minister-maker). Such is the one right now which has Bibi back in the chair with extreme right-wing or religiously conservative partners.

So is this all about politics, not democracy? No. For years, politicians on both sides have indicated the Supreme Court needed to be reformed, as both feared it was becoming too powerful , too insulated (as it chooses itself) and more importantly, too arbitrary. Parliamentary governments are inherently unstable, and they become almost impossible when an outside body (i.e., the court) can rule who can be a cabinet minister. Liberals/Progressives switched to opposing any change now because of who is in the ruling government: if the court’s ability to restrain the government is limited right now, they fear the ultra-conservatives will run wild. They may not be wrong, and they are certainly correct to fear such an outcome. But all that points to the real issue, which is neither democracy nor politics: it is the Israeli polity.

The modern state of Israel has always represented an uneasy alliance between two competing visions: a larger group of secular/progressive Jews (Zionists) looking for a haven from a hostile outside world, one where they can enact their idea of a peaceful, communitarian paradise, and a small set of religious Jews (Haredim) who seek to return to being God’s Chosen People, and only that. In-between those two groups were pragmatic Jews (smaller than the left, larger than the ultra-orthodox) who might not want to chant Torah all day, but weren’t convinced by the promises of socialism. For decades, these groups set aside their differences to deal with the unrelenting hostility of Israel’s Arab neighbors. It doesn’t make sense to argue about whether busses can run on Shabbos when there’s an Arab army marching on the town!

Here’s where demographics plays a card. The ultra-orthodox, correctly called Haredim, were content to get special favors from the government for a long time. They were a small group, and as long as the government left them alone, they agreed to merely complain about the rest of Israel not abiding by Halakha (Jewish religious law). The government agreed to exempt them from military service, allowed them to run their own schools, and even granted them extra social benefits. The Haredim and their way of life were subsidized by the Israeli government, whether conservative or liberal.

A funny thing happened. Haredi families average six children and holding steady. Secular Jewish families (whether politically conservative of liberal) average two children and falling. Government data show 1/4 of first graders in Israel are Haredim. So the Haredim have risen to almost thirteen percent of Israel’s population, and parties representing them have gained an important number of seats in the Knesset. And since they are continuing to grow, they are on target to reach almost forty percent of the population by mid-century.

As they have grown, they have protected the benefits they previously secured from the government, but have begun to demand more implementation of their views on social issues: separate spaces in public for men and women, stricter Shabbos observance, restrictions on advertising, more funding for and support of their way of life. This has predictably led to conflict, as the liberal and progressive Israelis see the Haredim as people exempt from the military, learning nothing but Torah in their schools, and coddled by the government. The Haredim respond that their faith is what is protecting Israel. As one young Haredi man said, ‘if everyone was learning Torah and praying with us, God would protect us.’

Why is this playing out over the Israeli Supreme Court? Bibi’s government is willing to grant the Haredim greater rights and privileges. Yet of the court can simply rule such things as “unreasonable,” it can stop that process. The battle is really over what Israel is: a secular democracy or a more religiously-inclined one.

Here’s the even more interesting part. The Biden administration is conducting some high-level negotiations (right now) with Israel and Saudi Arabia. The Trump administration brokered the Abraham accords, which normalized relations between Israel, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Bahrain. That was little noticed but important, because it represented the first major normalization among Arab states not directly in contact with Israel. The contact states like Egypt and Jordan came to the table long ago; Syria (and the Syrian puppet government in Lebanon) never will. Most other Arab states held back, waiting to see what the Saudi monarchy did.

The Saudis are looking for a NATO-style commitment from the US for protection (not the backroom handshake deal which has been in effect since FDR) and a US-provided civil nuclear program. Bibi wants Saudi normalization as a feather in his cap, and to establish the basis for an Israeli-Saudi anti-Iranian coalition. The Biden Administration wants to reassert US leadership in the Middle East, push out the Russians and Chinese, and draw a line in the sand with Iran.

Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, aka MBS, the man President Biden called a pariah (maybe) and a murderer (certainly), is the power behind the throne (literally) in Saudi Arabia and is leading the Saudi side of the negotiations. The Times and Post have started briefly commenting on the talks, which were secret until now. Saudi King Salman (MBS’ father) has apparently insisted that Israel make some offer to the Palestinians as part of the process, and specifically that promising not to annex the West Bank is insufficient. The fact that such things have leaked suggests to me the talks are far along, and neither Bibi nor MBS is willing to let the issue of Palestine derail the agreement.

What’s this got to do with the Israeli Supreme Court? Bibi is dependent upon the Haredi and ultra-conservative parties because he has a narrow majority in the Knesset. The Biden administration has reportedly told Netanyahu not to go forward with changes to the court’s rules and composition without first securing an agreement with which the majority of Israelis agree. How to square the circle? What if Netanyahu secures a grand deal with Saudi Arabia, gets increased American aid, throws the Palestinians a bone (it wouldn’t need to be much, since there is no reliable partner to negotiate with right now), and offers to bring some liberal/labor parties into the government to negotiate a better set of court reforms, while letting the Haredi and ultra-conservatives choose to stay or go?

It’s a high-impact, low probability scenario, I admit. The shoals of Middle Eastern politics are filled with the hopeful shipwrecks of American and European peace plans, and this may be one more. But the US Secretary of State isn’t shuttling around the Middle East (repeatedly) to sample falafel. Stay tuned!

The Supreme Court recently made two important decisions affecting (not impacting) post-secondary education in America: eliminating the use of race as an admissions tool, and denying President Biden the authority to waive accumulated student debt. Both are major changes, and welcome ones in my opinion. But both the policies in question and the courts decisions addressed the symptoms of our failing system of college and university education, not the sources. There is a real post-secondary educational problem: there are too many students, paying too much tuition, and receiving too little education. Those students accrue too much debt, which is currently federally-secured. You can see the problem: they’re never going to pay it off, and you and I are on the hook for it. How did we get here?

Like most debacles, it’s not just one thing, but there is one important and often-overlooked cause: failing to understand the dynamics of the situation and correctly define the problem. What is post-secondary education for? Why does it even exist? Universities developed out of Catholicism in the Middle Ages, seeking the scholastic trinity of “truth, goodness, and beauty.” Traditionally, there were two aspects to this search. One was to give certain highly-specialized fields of study the time and attention they deserve. Think doctors, lawyers, engineers: you want them well-trained before they ever start in their profession, and you want their professions to grow and deepen.. The second was to provide for a well-rounded individual, thus the Humanities curriculum. Leaders of tomorrow, whether they be politicians, businessmen, or any of the specialties mentioned above, need to have an understanding of human nature, history, civics, psychology, etc. Why? You don’t want a politician who doesn’t understand that “power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” You don’t want an engineer who only worships efficiency and neglects comfort. You want a surgeon with empathy, not one who sees his patients as slabs of meat to cut on. Pretty obvious, no?

People who underwent such education were a limited lot. The local butcher, shopkeeper, and policeman were fine without it. Because of the vicissitudes of history, such education was usually reserved to white men of property. It obviously didn’t have to be that way, but it happened nonetheless. And the result of that education played out in an obvious fashion: graduates of this system fared much better than those who did not have access to it. The fact that those graduates also had access to all kinds of other advantages which played a part in their later success was obvious, but sometimes forgotten.

In the mid-to-late twentieth century, the gradual liberalization of society led to calls for greater diversity in college admissions: more women, more people of color. After all, there was no legitimate reason to deny them access as they were just as likely to succeed. The fact that in most cases they were disadvantaged only strengthened the argument.

A little later, state governments decided to remove the stipends they paid to public colleges and universities. Budgets were tight, and politicians saw costs increasing markedly as more people went to college, while the majority of the population still did not attend. Using public funding for the benefit of the few at the cost of the many seemed like a poor policy option. The argument that a more educated populace was better for all sounded vaguely like an analogue to “trickle-down economics.” State governments encouraged state colleges and universities to rely on tuition and to compete, on the theory such competition would improve the results: less cost, better education. But post-secondary education was hardly a free market: high barriers to entry, limited suppliers, limited governmental oversight.

And there were still some proponents of college-for-all. They posit that if a college degree results in higher lifetime earnings, then everybody should have access to it, as that is only fair. See how this view misses the point of post-secondary education as it originally existed: a finishing school for a subset of the population. Most people didn’t need it. But college-for-all types viewed a sheepskin as a credential, not a learning experience: get the degree, make more money. Except that’s not what a college degree represented. It was an education, not a credential.

Meanwhile, the federal government, responding to the notion that college should be available to far more people (if not all), and the fact that a marketplace of colleges competing for students would probably decrease overall attendance, decided to become the guarantor of student loans.

Here’s where the economists are face-palming.

You create an increasing demand for college education, with a limited supply (you can’t generate new schools overnight). You fuel the demand further by offering generous loans packages (rates and repayment schemes no bank would ever offer an eighteen year-old with no job) guaranteed by the federal government (you know, the people who literally print the money), and you tell colleges to compete for students.

The prospective students don’t care about return on investment (ROI), as they haven’t even learned about that yet. The colleges have no reason to limit tuition, since price is no longer a determining factor due to federal funny-money. And since students are the ones making the choices, they look for name-recognition and perks. They’re young adults, they want to impress and be catered to. So colleges which previously took the position “we have an education you need to learn or else” transitioned to “help us find your idea of education (and be comfortable doing it).”

Voila, as they say, you have insane tuition that no one really pays, except the federal taxpayers who get socked after the fact for student debt relief. You have colleges eliminating core curricula and instead offering a smorgasbord of trendy electives which amount to fast-food degrees (high cost, little value). You get serial students with hundreds-of-thousands of dollars in debt and degrees in non-marketable subjects (they never do learn ROI, so they don’t even know what they don’t know).

And here we are. Add in for-profit rip-off institutions, racial gamesmanship, and elite university endowments which border on the obscene, and you have the modern American post-secondary educational disaster. Oh, there are still a small number of professionals earning useful degrees and preparing to be the doctors, lawyers, engineers and leaders of tomorrow. That system still exists. But the rest of the contraption is a very expensive Rube Goldberg device of little value and high cost, in terms of money, utility, and social damage.

As bad as all this sounds, it’s even a little worse because it isn’t that hard to fix. First off, stop treating a college degree as some magic ticket which makes one wealthy. To re-purpose an old campaign phrase, “it’s the education, stupid!” College is not for everyone, and jobs which require a college degree should have some legitimate reason for doing so. People who go to college should pay their own way. Colleges should compete on tuition and graduate performance, and enforce common knowledge standards. Students should be held to standards if they receive any form of financial support. You want specifics?

• Eliminate government subsidies for any colleges with massive endowments. The elite schools can literally afford to cover all their students tuition in perpetuity. Make them do it, or have their students’ rich parents do it. And tax those endowments, please!
• Enforce expanded minimum core curricula for all degree-producing schools as part of accreditation. This is probably still the case, but the standards have become too lax. Every graduate needs to understand human psychology, American history and government, macro and micro-economics, for example. Electives should be the cherry on the top, not the bulk of the meal.
• Require detailed reporting on college costs and outcomes. What percentage graduate, with what debt burden? What are the average salaries of specific degree-holders at the five and ten year point?
• Re-imagine admissions to negate racial, legacy, athletics and other considerations. Applications must be on a common form which erases who the student is, from where they come, etc. Just classes and grades and test results, and if the college so chooses, standardized testing scores. AI can probably help in this process. Use an essay (similarly scrubbed and de-personalized) for a better understanding of the individual.
• Support the growth and success of community colleges. Here is where governmental funding should be targeted, especially for technical topics (e.g., coding, health-care services, law enforcement) and common curricula (finishing school for those not sure whether they want to go the full baccalaureate route). This also provides a window of opportunity to late-blooming students who would benefit from a four-year degree program.
• Tie federal subsidies to compensatory service as an alternative to repayment. You want to pay off your loan, great. If not, you start working for the federal government (or allied state programs) for a few years, either as a pause on repayment or eventually a waiver for it. I keep hearing Millennials complain there aren’t good jobs with great benefits like pensions anymore, while I read pages of empty federal job vacancies. Maybe they haven’t heard of the internet?
• Want to get really radical? Throw out all athletic scholarships (an oxymoron even more ridiculous than military intelligence). All sports at colleges and universities are club squad/intramural/extra-curricular. For the big money-makers, men’s college football and basketball, make the teams simply affiliated with the universities through a financial agreement. The one-and-dones in basketball and the NIL shenanigans in football should be enough to convince even the most ardent fans that student athletes are mostly a thing of the past. This is where the NCAA and courts are headed anyway, so why not embrace it?
• Not radical enough? Tie any federal funding (e.g., research grants, tuition) for colleges and universities to concrete standards promoting the common good. What has your institution done for the local community? How have you enabled academically-gifted but financially-disadvantaged students to enroll and graduate? How are you leading by example in terms of promoting free speech and diversity of ideas? Let the institutions publish their plans and their results, with the government solely giving them an annual pass/fail grade to make them eligible for federal funds.

Tuition costs have increased almost 180% over the past forty years, well beyond the effects of inflation. That spending has gone into endowments, athletics, administrative positions, infrastructure, and student services. Note what is missing: education. No one seriously argues today’s American college graduates are better educated than graduates of the past; they’re just much more expensive. The system as it is is failing.

America is at an inflection point. While more people want to go to college (as a percent of the population), the overall number of young people is declining. Small schools, private schools, and liberal arts schools are in danger of disappearing, as they did not prepare for the future and don’t want to now. The American post-secondary educational system was the envy of the rest of the world. It still is, in an elite sense: twelve of the top twenty universities in the world (according to Times Higher Education) are in America. Those elites who seek advancement are still attending the best schools and getting the best education. The system works for them; it just fails the larger talent pool of American students, their parents, and the taxpayers. Fix it. Now.