Students, faculty protest closures, cuts in humanities at Hebrew U.

As the academic year began at universities this week, higher education leaders projected a sense of optimism and said the school year was off to an easy start.

Some humanities students at Hebrew University of Jerusalem see things differently, however, due to major cuts over the past several years. The scope of course offerings has shrunk, and several humanities departments are on the verge of closing. Several weeks before the school year began, departments were required to make cuts that meant cancelling classes.

Yesterday, about 300 students and faculty members demonstrated on the university's Mount Scopus campus to protest the cutbacks. They included students wearing togas and carrying signs stating "the spirit of man is the spirit of the nation" and "Aristotle is turning in his grave."

The head of the university's East Asian studies department, Yuri Pines, said he had to lay off lecturers and felt as if he was being asked "to choose whether to amputate a hand or a foot."

The foreign language and culture departments experienced the most drastic cuts, including laying off half of last year's faculty. Some class sizes were increased. Last year the Russian and German studies departments were merged into a department for Central and Eastern European cultures. As a result, students, including Russian majors, must take a joint introductory course about German poetry.

The head of German studies at the university, Hanni Mittelmann, said: "Despite the fact that there are common aspects to German and Russian culture, the two departments were combined without our approval. Classes relating to both [Russian and German] studies are given in Hebrew, so there is no reason for complaints, but there is no doubt that the cuts are a catastrophe."

The dean of humanities at the university, Israel Bartal, said: "In recent months we were required to cancel about 4 percent of the nearly 1,600 classes [in the humanities]. That is about 60 courses.

"The humanities [school] is still considered the best in Israel and [among] the best in the world. It is a question of whether there are three advanced French courses or just two."

Bartal rejected criticism by students and faculty over the merger of the German and Russian departments, saying it was due to organizational reform unconnected to budget cuts. The university was the only one in the world that taught the subjects separately, he said.

A university spokeswoman said: "If the cuts in education continue, the standing of the humanities may suffer, especially given the difficulty in recruiting young researchers returning from leading universities around the world."