Resolution of the Technion Senate and the Council

In the hundred years that have passed since it was founded, the Technion faculty members have taught and educated the technological and scientific leadership of society in Israel – Tens of thousands of engineers, scientists, doctors, and architects who are entrusted with the responsibility of preserving, developing and nurturing the security and health of the citizens of the country and the environment in which they live. The actions of our graduates led to so much good and right in our culture, economy, security and more.

The Technion does not operate in a vacuum. An academic environment cannot be separated from the values by which society functions. When the value base in the civil environment that surrounds us is blurred, the Technion Senate and Council adhere to the basic values that have guided the institution for a hundred years and strengthen the hands of those who work to reinforce freedom and justice, social equality of rights for all citizens of the country regardless of religion, race and gender, freedom of conscience, language, education and culture.

The Technion will do whatever it takes to preserve and uphold the fundamental values that appear in the Declaration of Independence, the Technion’s constitution and its code of ethics.

Members of the Technion Senate and Council call on the leadership – in all its guises – to regain their composures, unite forces and remove any threat to the fundamental values. Surely, there is room for disputes in a free society, but on the shoulders of the officials elected by the people is the responsibility to make every effort to seek the truth and resolve disputes with full intent and with a matter-of-fact and straight-forward approach. The Technion Senate and Council call on the Knesset of Israel to stop legislative processes that undermine the democratic structure in the State of Israel, and to create a framework that will allow changes to be made with due care and with broad consensus. We call on the Prime Minister and his fellow leaders to do everything in their power to listen attentively and respectfully to the opinions of professionals who are leading Israeli society to extraordinary achievements in the social sciences and the humanities, in law and medicine, in the exact sciences and in engineering.

The Senate and the Council call on the Technion management to resolutely defend the Technion’s fundamental values: to denounce and halt in advance the seeds of discrimination, infringement of freedom of expression, offensive discourse and deviation from the pursuit of truth, responsibility and integrity. The Senate and the Council call on the Technion management to urgently formulate practical ways of dealing with the daily threat to our fundamental values, in education and in research.