Shabbat Shalom: Women Scientists and the Freedom to Discover
Dear Friends,
This week I met women who are going to change the world.
At this year’s “BGU Women in Science Day,” female graduate students competed for the outstanding research prize, presenting their findings to a panel of judges. I spent time walking among the posters, listening to young researchers explain their work with a level of clarity, confidence, and intellectual excitement that stopped me more than once.
The “women in science” question has never really been about talent. The talent is obvious. The real question is whether talent finds its way. Whether the path from potential to achievement is longer, harder, or lonelier for some than for others. And every time brilliant minds are discouraged, excluded, or diverted away from science, society loses discoveries that might otherwise have changed lives.
What struck me most was not only the quality of the research itself, but the atmosphere surrounding it: curiosity, disagreement, ambition, rigor, open discussion. In other words, the ordinary miracle of a functioning research university.
That may sound almost self-evident. But increasingly, around the world and here in Israel as well, it is not.
This past week, in my capacity as Chair of VERA, the Council of Israeli University Presidents, I helped lead an unprecedented joint response by the heads of 48 Israeli institutions of higher education, universities and colleges, public and private, secular and religious, against proposed legislation that would allow the Minister of Education to financially penalize universities for institutional actions deemed “political.” Beneath the innocuous title of the law lies something far more troubling: the concentration of power to determine what constitutes legitimate public expression in the hands of a single politician.
There is an irony here that should concern all of us. Universities are often accused of being “political” simply because they remain among the last places where difficult questions are still openly debated. But the purpose of a university is not ideological conformity. A healthy university is one where ideas are tested rigorously, where evidence matters, where disagreement is permitted, and where young people learn not what to think, but how to think.
That is exactly what I saw this week among those young women researchers presenting their work.
Their discoveries may emerge years from now in medicine, engineering, climate science, AI, or biotechnology. But none of that innovation happens in environments governed by fear, intellectual intimidation, or political dependency. Scientific creativity requires institutional freedom.
This is why protecting higher education matters far beyond the university itself. Countries that weaken the independence of their universities ultimately weaken their own scientific capacity, economic competitiveness, democratic resilience, and ability to attract and retain talent.
At Ben-Gurion University, especially in the Negev, we understand this deeply. Our mission has always been larger than classrooms and laboratories alone. We are helping build the future scientific, medical, technological, and social leadership of Israel. That responsibility requires not only investment in research and students, but protection of the conditions that allow knowledge itself to flourish.
Watching those students this week, I left deeply optimistic. The next generation is ready. Our responsibility is to ensure that the university remains a place where their talent can thrive freely.
Shabbat Shalom,
Danny
