While the media and the professorate pilloried their reports, the group's charges caused the Council for Higher Education to form a blueribboncommittee last November comprised of seven political scientists - three from Israel and four from abroad -- to conduct a study of all of the political science departments in Israeli universities.
The specter of the president of a major national university running in abject fear, and forming a blueribboncommittee that one suspects has as its mission to pre-emptively run up the white flag to the OCR investigators, is indeed very disturbing and does not augur well for the vibrancy and independence of higher education.