Supporting the courts from Simcha Rotman’s accusations: a rebuttal

In his Haaretz interview “Down with the Court” (Feb 23, 2023), Simcha Rotman has articulated his rationale of the Legal reform that he promotes for legislation these days and he explained why this reform not only that it will not weaken the Israeli democracy but will strengthen it. He starts with clarifying that while he sees no problem of democracy (and of academic freedom) in Hungary, he does see a problem of democracy and of academic freedom in Israel.

Rotman argues that Israel’s elite (courts and academia) are both dominated by a narrow group (Secular/left/Ashkenazi), which does not match the profile of the population and who only promote people from their own type, so that right wing or HAREDI populations do not get a fair representation in the leading elites. For that reasons, he believes that the legal reform rule that has the nomination of judges by politicians is fully justified to repair an unfair inbalance.

Rotman does not discuss the problems of making the judicial dependent on the government (i.e., destroying its independence) but many people who are strongly concerned about the legal reform (in its present form), find the criticism of the Israeli elites, somewhat convincing, and concede that some type (though not this) reform may be needed. The aim of this rebuttal is to argue that, in fact, the procedures at place in Israeli academia and legal systems are well justified and that nominations based on political or religious affiliations will not make them fairer and will destroy these institutions. Since I am scientist (Tel-Aviv University, School of Psychology, and School of Neuroscience) I will focus on the Israeli academia.

Rotman starting point is a true regularity. There is indeed a correlation between academic/legal status and political and religious affiliation. In the academia, for example, the majority of senior staff, are liberal/secular, rather than conservative/religious. I do not know if in Israel today, there is also a correlation with ethnic origins (except for Arabs or Ethiopian Jews; for most of the academics I am even not confident of their ethnic origins, which are often quite mixed). I agree that such (ethnic) correlations should worry us and we need to think of ways to reduce them. I do not think the same is the case for correlation between academic status and political views. I explain this below.

Rotman takes the correlation between liberal-secular views and academic status to indicate a causal process: the bias being caused by the procedures used by academics in hiring new people — we prefer people who are like us: secular/liberals (I agree that if such a bias exist, it would be unfair.) To balance this bias, Rotman wants to apply a type of affirmative action bias in favour of conservative/religious groups.

While the correlation between academic status or secular-liberal values exists, it is one of the first aspects of science education to understand the fundamental difference between causation and correlation. Every beginning scientist learns that correlation does not imply causation. As illustrated in the simple diagram below, a correlation between eating ice-cream and getting sunburn may exist, but is not due to the former causing the latter. Rather both are caused by another factor (sunny weather)