Yuli Tamir, President of Beit Berl College: We Will Grow from This Together

 

On February 20, 2024, our group (SBSMI) had the honor to meet with Dr. Yuli Tamir, President of Beit Berl College, (along with Yossi Levin, the Strategic Development Director of the college). It was more quiet than usual when our delegation was on the Beit Berl campus, because it was the first week of an official break in the academic calendar. Israel’s educational institutions were deeply affected by the atrocities of October 7^th and their aftermath. Studies that should have started right after the fall holiday season (which ends with Sukkot and Simchat Torah – the day the attacks were perpetrated) were delayed in some cases by nearly three months, to the beginning of January 2024.

A Career of Public Service

Dr. Tamir is an academic and politician with an incredible resume. Between 1999 and 2010, she served in various governmental roles, including Member of the Knesset (MK) from the Labor Party, Minister of Immigrant Absorption, Minister of Education, and Deputy Speaker of the Knesset. She also served on a variety of Knesset committees, including the Education, Culture & Sports, Law & Justice, and Finance committees. From 2010 to 2020, Tamir was President of Shenkar College of Engineering and Design in Ramat Gan, Israel. She has been an adjunct professor at the Blavatnik School of Government at Oxford University since 2015. Tamir is the author of several books and numerous articles in the fields of moral and political philosophy, philosophy of education, feminism, and human rights.

As Minister of Education, Dr. Tamir led a comprehensive school reform, raising teachers' salaries and introducing innovative teaching methodologies; these are causes that she has continued to dedicate herself to at Beit Berl, which is primarily a teacher training college. One in five teachers in Israel is a graduate of Beit Berl.

Origins of Beit Berl

Beit Berl is an internationally recognized degree-granting institution which provides Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees across four different academic disciplines: Education, Educational Counseling, Art & Film, as well as Security Forces training. The Beit Berl community was first established in 1946, and was named to honor Berl Katznelson (1887-1944), a Zionist pioneer who was born in Lithuania in 1887 and made aliya to Israel in 1908. Originally a librarian, Katznelson is known as a founding father of a variety of labor-oriented institutions in Israel, including the Histadrut (a labor union), HaMashbir (a consumer cooperative which evolved into a national department store chain), and Kupat Holim Clalit (a mutual aid society which has become one of Israel’s four major HMO services). He also served as editor of Davar, the first daily newspaper of the labor movement. The college named after him is highly diverse and caters to all communities across Israeli society: Arab/Jew, religious/secular, etc. Beit Berl is 30% Arab, both in terms of students and faculty. The college also enrolls a significant number of Haredi (religious) students. Beit Berl also has an educational advisory board; beyond being a college campus with four faculties; Beit Berl is an educational teaching and learning lab, with many different active schools directly on site.

Navigating a Crisis Together

In the pre-October 7^th reality, the Beit Berl institutional focus was on “preparing teachers for the 21^st century,” and helping educators and educational systems catch up with new methodologies and technologies, such as strategies for teaching and grading with the emergence of generative AI (such as ChatGPT, etc.). According to Dr. Tamir, schools are not adequately meeting the needs and aspirations of students, because educational realities change far quicker than educational systems do.

Everything changed drastically on October 7^th, 2023.

A huge national challenge after October 7^th was arranging nursery schools and kindergartens for displaced children; in particular, the poorest of evacuees have faced enormous challenges, because they have very limited community and support systems to fall back on. Beit Berl teachers-in-training and faculty rolled up their sleeves and got to work on solving these problems right away. They placed temporary nursery schools and kindergartens in community centers and in the hotels where displaced families had taken up residence. What Beit Berl constituents found in their pivot to address these issues was surprising. In general, the audiences they worked with were so grateful for the help provided, and there was little to no ideological conflict. With their academic focus areas of art and education, Beit Berl was well positioned to help. Families, kids, and communities asked for art, and they were also eager to simply be listened to. Throughout our trip we heard the same refrain, that the national infrastructure of Israel—state-run institutions and services—were not able to fully function or be adequately responsive to citizen needs as well as they should have during these challenging times—and Israeli civil society self-organized and stepped in to take up the slack.

At Beit Berl, post-October 7, suddenly there was a rapid expansion of urgent focus areas based on sheer necessity. College leadership had to deal with the dual realities of their various constituents, such as displaced people from the north, tension between conservative vs. progressive demographies, the needs and reactions of Jewish versus Arab students, and the needs of young people in various mechinot (see footnote).

Exploring the Jewish-Arab Relationship

Dr. Tamir spoke to us about how they worked hard to support all of their students (and faculty) after October 7^th, be they Arab or Jew. Beit Berl has been a Jewish-Arab coexistence center for 14 years. The first thing they did as an institution and community was condemn Hamas' atrocities right away. Then they opened up a  Zoom-based faculty/student dialogue, because school was on hiatus. Some folks had posted some extreme comments online and as a community they needed to come up with a very clear ethical code of discourse. Over three months of oftentimes painful discussions, tears were shed and deep emotions were expressed. They collectively decided that there has to be a limit to what you can say, for the health of the community. There were even cases of faculty members who posted extreme statements who had to then issue a retraction and apology to their colleagues. What the community collectively learned is how to be sensitive to other members of the community. One example: after October 7^th, signs cropped up all over Israel, on billboards, skyscrapers, advertising screens, and shop windows, saying in Hebrew “together we will win” (b’yachad nenatzeach - ביחד ננצח). Beit Berl leadership felt that this was not the right message nor the right approach to be inclusive of all citizens. So instead, on the Beit Berl campus is emblazoned the message “We will grow from this together” (niztmach mi’ze yachad - נצמח מזה יחד).

A Commitment to Educate Normatively

Beit Berl is dedicated to the progressive side of educational ideology: deliberation, human rights, democratic thought, and social justice. We asked Dr. Tamir: “Can this Beit Berl experience post-October 7^th resonate in the United States?” Her response was to remind us that “the role of the university is not only to teach but to educate.” She said that it is not simply a question of transmitting information with complete neutrality, but instead to ensure that formation of character is central to the educational mission. She added that, in fact, neutrality in education has only emerged as a fad in the last 20 years. Prior to that, universities were often centers for nation-building, they created a sense of community, built norms, and had what Dr. Tamir called a “normative mission.” She was, for instance, disappointed with her own alma mater, Oxford University in the UK, which, like many other world-renowned institutions of higher learning, refused to put out a statement condemning the October 7^th atrocities of Hamas. Beit Berl is currently in the process of launching an ebook – sharing tips and recommendations for how to effectively volunteer in education as well as more specifics about what they did to help communities during the crisis.

Prior to October 7^th, Israeli society had been gripped in an ongoing civil debate about the future of their judicial system. There had been 39 consecutive weeks of peaceful protests, attracting hundreds of thousands of people to come together in incredible acts of solidarity. It is Dr. Tamir’s contention that these efforts will not be lost after October 7^th but actually the opposite—these efforts at protecting Israel’s liberal progressive democracy will be reinforced. According to Dr. Tamir, Israel is going to be re-built from the bottom up… through the civil society. It’s the people and the grass roots that bring optimism. When the people want to do something, they find some way to contribute.

* Mechinot are preparatory programs, such as Beit Berl’s Art Preparatory Program for Arab Students, Preparatory Program for Film, Television and Education for Arab Students, and the Master’s-level Preparatory Program in visual arts and art therapy.

** For more from Dr. Yuli Tamir, check out this recent podcast appearance (January 2, 2024) On Pain, Sorrow, and Compassion - Z3 Podcast Ep. 10 with Prof. Yuli Tamir