Ariel University accepted into key education organisation

Ariel University in the West Bank on Sunday 19 June was officially granted a seat on the Committee of University Heads, ending a years-long fight for acceptance, writes Tobias Siegal for The Times of Israel.

The decision to exclude the university until now meant that it wasn’t part of the national decision-making processes connected to higher education, and had difficulties related to shared research programmes and other academic collaborations. Ariel University is set to join the eight other committee members, which are: the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Tel Aviv University, the University of Haifa, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Bar-Ilan University, the Weizmann Institute of Science, the Technion, and the Open University of Israel (which holds observer status.)

Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett, who spearheaded the issue of establishing a medical school at Ariel University in 2018 while serving as education minister, welcomed the decision. “Ariel University is no longer a ‘stepchild’,” Bennett said on Twitter. “It was officially accepted into the Committee of University Heads. Everyone knows how much I love Ariel University. At the time I fought and managed to approve the establishment of its medical school despite great opposition.”
Full report on The Times of Israel site