In the past few weeks, following the legislative changes being promoted by Israel’s government, concerns have been raised regarding infringement on academic freedom and a brain drain from Israel. Other voices claim that these
concerns are baseless and unrealistic. In order to obtain a clear picture of the situation, based on empirical data, the Israel Young Academy
conducted a survey of this issue among faculty members at Israeli universities. A short
survey was sent to the rectors of all the universities throughout Israel, who disseminated it themselves or via their deans to faculty members. The responses were collected over a ten-day period (March 6–14, 2023), and the
results are presented in this document.
The results of this survey, which comprised 1,916 faculty members, reveal an unequivocal trend of increase in the respondents’ estimates of their chances of leaving Israel (again, we stress that this is a retroactive assessment in
comparison with their chances of doing so a year ago, since no such survey was conducted at that time).
According to the survey, a very high percentage (73%) of the respondents to the survey reported a significant increase (averaging 35%) in their chances of leaving Israel, and the vast majority declared that the main reason for this is the judicial legislation process in recent months.
One noteworthy finding is that the younger faculty members – the next generation of Israeli academia – reported the highest increases in their assessment of their chances of leaving.
