A Door Closes, A Window Open

A Door Closes, A Window Opens

In December, 1973, I flew back to Ottawa for my brother David's bar mitzvah. A week or so after the simha, I was surprised to receive a telegram (phone call? I can't remember) from Tel Aviv University.

"Where are you?" they wanted to know. A week before the Yom Kippur war, I had taken the bus from Jerusalem to Tel Aviv to interview for a graduate position there as a M.Sc. student /teaching aide. The following week, the war erupted and the next two months were turmoil.

Nevertheless, school had now started again in Israel and I was expected back, to teach and study. I remember sitting on the plane back to Tel Aviv with a religious man who told me that the world was going to end soon, and that the battle of Gog and Magog (Armageddon) was imminent.

Thus began my romance with Tel Aviv University that lasted thirty-six years. I did my graduate degrees there (with a 30 month hiatus for army duty), hung out at Gilman, lived intermittently in the dorms (the same ones that still exist!), did some crazy things at the pool that I cannot share, fell in love, landed a tenured position at the Dental School and more recently Medical Faculty, and made a decent career as a 'bad breath guru'. I even brought the university some four million dollars in revenues from several inventions.

In two weeks I turn 58 and could continue as a tenured professor there for another decade. But I have decided to call it a day. There are many reasons for this, but perhaps the main one is that I have many interests, aside from being a microbiologist (or scientist, for that matter), and this university (and most others) want their professors to be very focused and to maintain the very same specialty throughout their careers. In other words, if you come in as a young lecturer teaching bacteriology in your thirties, you are expected to be teaching the same subject thirty-five years later.

That works for many of my colleagues, who are delighted to hang out in laboratories for decades focusing on a singular path towards stellar success in a very specific scientific area. But for those of us who become easily distracted by other loves such as music, creative writing, thinking and other 'wastes of time' the academic trajectory becomes a strait-jacket.

Some of my favorite scientists followed meandering careers. Louis Pasteur, who started out as an amazing chemist and followed his nose into microbiology and other biological pursuits and my own professor, Eugene Rosenberg who also began in chemistry and found a new and amazing career in bacterial behavior. I also remember the late Herman Epstein, whose amazing career kept morphing (I was witness to his main morph, as he started studying the development of rodent brains in response to educational development in the 1970s).

For many years, my research on bad breath saved me. I was able to look at not only the microbes that cause the smell, but also the smelly substances, and the psychological implications of smelling and being smelled. I invented gizmos and mouthwashes. I interviewed thousands of people and learned a lot about humanity. The breadth of breath research was satisfying for me. But when I left the dental school for the medical faculty five years ago, I was expected to morph back into a regular bacteriologist and teach medical bacteriology much the same as it was taught when I was a student in the early 1970s. I tried, but eventually decided that this was wrong. I cannot teach medical students subjects in which I am neither up-to-date, nor particularly interested.

And so, from December 1st, one month from now, I will become an 'emeritus professor' at Tel Aviv University. I will maintain my office and laboratory (the latter will likely diminish in size and manpower of time) and will continue, part-time, my work on the causes, diagnosis and treatment of bad breath and related issues. I will also do some teaching, but only subjects that I feel passionate about.

My original retirement plan was to spend less of my time at the university, and invest more effort in my other pursuits, i.e., playing and singing jazz, writing children's stories, and teaching multidisciplinary creative thinking. I sent a message to the President of Afeka Engineering College, Prof. Moti Sokolov, asking him whether I would be continuing the course in creative thinking that I had given over the past few years with Dr. Alon Amit. Instead he called me in and invited me to be the Dean of Students of the college.

Flabbergasted, I accepted. During all my years at Tel Aviv University, I was never asked or elected to run or administer anything (always considered too much of a scatterbrained nonconformist). When I applied for the position of Rector of Tel Aviv University a few years ago, the nomination committee treated me with such kindness and compassion that I knew it was hopeless! I certainly hope that the qualities that made me such a round peg in a square hole will now work to my advantage!

So, from Dec. 1st I start a new and exciting career, hoping to help the college shape and sharpen the minds and careers of 2000 youngsters. Afeka, here I come.

The Un-iversity

The Un-iversity

Once in a while, my dream of starting an un-iversity comes back to "haunt" me. After over thirty years at a regular university (Tel Aviv University), I am aware of the shortcomings of ordinary academia.

1. The students are degree-oriented. The want to take a course, get a y average, to get a degree in z.

2. Teaching is mostly mediocre. This is because the teachers are paid primarily to do research and don't care that much about giving inspiring lectures. Often they give the same lecture over and over again for decades.

3. The university usually discourages lateral thinking among faculty. This is because universities are arranged according to disciplines, faculties and departments. You become a professor in a specific area (microbiology in my case) and are pigeonholed to teach and research in that field your whole career. Focusing, on the other hand, is highly encouraged.

4. Many of the most intelligent and successful people on the planet never finished university, let alone completed a Ph.D. No matter how motivating, enlightening, and innovative they are, they would never get a research or teaching appointment at a good school.

5. University courses are structured. They have predetermined programs, specific curricula, have course outlines, etc.

6. Universities often prize and teach so-called "knowledge", rather than the paths and processes of mental development.

7. Universities tend to elect officers who believe in routine and resist change

8. Universities tend to accept students who do well in routine examinations under routine conditions.

So, what would an un-iversity be? I am not sure, but we could share a few thoughts.

1. It would prize innovation and lateral thinking.

2. The emphasis would not be on obtaining marks or a degree.

3. The faculty would me more interested in sharing thoughts and enthusiasm than making a salary.

4. Innovation, creativity, curiosity are words that would be commonly used.

5. The students would make a difference.

6. Not all the teachers would be required to have advanced degrees, though some of their students might.

In my next blog:things I would like to learn that no one is teaching.

Campus of mediocracy

Let me start out by stating clearly that the problems of Tel Aviv University which I will be discussing are as much my fault as anyone else's. I wouldn't like to give the impression that I am blaming others, I think we are all to blame.
In the early 1970s, I moved to Tel Aviv University as a young master's student. What a welcome escape it was from my undergraduate days as a chemistry student at Hebrew University. The University was young, most of the professors insisted on being called by their first name. Dan Ben Amotz could be seen wandering around campus barefoot (or almost barefoot) on his way to attend Kroy's crazy philosophy lectures.
There were few buildings and lots of sand, mud, and wild vegetation. I remember almost getting hit by lightning walking between life sciences and the medical school.
Over the past thirty-five years the university has sprouted a lot of concrete, and manicured lawns. I think it is a handsome campus. But I liked it better when it had more wild spaces.
I loved and still love our university, lived at the dorms, moved up through the ranks, fell in love on campus, and made it my career. I have also been involved in one of the few inventions that brings the university millions of dollars in licencing revenue.
From the 1970s to the present we have suffered from a string of mostly mediocre and sometimes cynical and self-serving administrations. One consequence was that our university went straight from youth to old age. We have now largely become a city college.
Students come, fill large halls, and go back home at six p.m. At night, when the city lights up, the university closes down. I couldn't even get the administration to consider lighting up the med school at night.
Our students have learned from us to become largely cynical, especially after the last strike. They want their degree, with as little effort as possible. And we oblige, teaching them with as little effort as possible.
I spent twenty years at the Dental School. The School was for many years run like a feifdom, the administration was self-serving, and ruled by intimidation. The teachers and researchers were intimidated by the administration, and took it out on the students. But when I made efforts to alert the University at the highest levels (both academice and administrative) to the situation, I was ignored and silenced. They let sleeping dogs lie until the deficit of the School could no longer be noticed. And then the shit started flying. We are left with half a Dental School, one that never had much of a research program and still does not.
In the Human Microbiology Department of the Medical Faculty where I now work, professors reaching the age of pension have not been replaced by young faculty. Those that have replaced them have mostly either fled or were not given tenure. Within a few years, there will not be any bacteriologists at all in the Medical Faculty. Does anyone care? Not really.
In the American medical program, sometimes five or less students attend classes (out of a class of 70). They say it's because we are not good enough teachers. Does anyone care? Not really.
Are there any staff or students of TAU out there reading this who think that we really care about our students, that we take pride in our teaching, that we care about our own university as much as we did twenty years ago? I challenge you to step forward.
Of course it's easy to blame VATAT and the budget cuts, but that ignores the dwindling return that the public sees on its own investment in our university.
Are we really doing lots of research that is groundbreaking? relevant? important?
Here is another point to ponder. Professors are paid the same salary whether or not they teach well, whether or not they publish research (I know some who stopped doing that years ago). There is no scale of excellence. On the contrary, professors who work hard at the university but also consult on the side (these are probably the more successful and community-oriented ones) actually get paid much less salary than those who profess to spend their 'full time' at the university, whether or not they do anything whilst there.
Mediocre administration breeds mediocre teaching and eventually leads to mediocre research. After all, the students we teach today are doing most of the research five years from now. I know that our university has international stars, but I have the feeling that we are for the most part so-so. It's hard to give a damn when the bosses of your bosses don't. We have suffered over three decades of cynical, mediocre leadership. And this breeds mediocrity in all facets of our campus.
Why should university professors try harder? There are fewer and fewer reasons. Success at our university goes unrewarded, and professors who do 'too well' in basic and applied research can find themselves with problems at the department level, especially when their own department is mediocre and jealous. Our university pays lip service to the need for innovation, but does little to encourage it. It recently rewrote its patent bylaws, and forced them down the throat of the applied researchers throughout the university. Does anyone on campus care? Not a wit.
Weizmann brings in 100 million dollars a year in royalties. Hebrew U about 40. Tel Aviv University? just a million or two (a significant part of it from my own inventions). The numbers speak for themselves.
We do not encourage innovation. The university's most famous and successful innovators have suffered quite a bit of humiliation over the years. The university does not really care. Tel Aviv University does not even send its own professors to give courses on innovation. The two courses on innovation given at Tel Aviv University that I know about are both outsourced! The only way I have been able to give a multidisciplinary course on innovative thinking (together with Dr. Alon Amit) is at Afeka engineering college. I have never be allowed to give such a lecture series on my own campus (I have tried). We have a new president with an outstanding personal record, but I continue to be pessimistic. If, as I stated above, we have relegated ourselves to the level of a city college, then five years from now we will have no raison d'etre whatsoever. After all, the 'michlalot' do a better job at being city colleges than we can. Some of them actually reward and pride themselves on good teaching.