,Respected Colleagues and Authorities
We – the international community of scholars and teachers – are informed that The Israeli Council of Higher Education of which you are members or correspondents, might order the closure of the Politics and Government Department at Ben-Gurion University (BGU), Beersheba, Israel, in its forthcoming meeting of October 23, 2012. Like most of my colleagues (not only those working in or around the field of Political Science), and like the members of the committee which initially evaluated the Department, I value very high the honesty, scholarship, commitment to independent research, and dedication to the future of their students displayed by the members of the department. The decision you will take will demonstrate before the world whether you stand for these values, or accept to crush them in the name of ideological motives and dictatorial “raison d’Etat”. I am urging you to choose the first.
,Sincerely
Etienne Balibar
Emeritus Professor of Philosophy, Université de Paris X – Nanterre
אקדמיה תחת מתקפה 
