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Nobel Winners Illustrate Israel's "Brain Drain"
barlevg writes "Two of the three scientists sharing this year's Nobel Prize in Chemistry have Israeli citizenship, with Dr. Arieh Warshel having been born and educated in Israel, yet both are based at universities in the United States. These two scientists are perhaps the highest profile examples of a growing problem in the so-called "start-up nation," which is known for its high-tech tech companies and scientific innovation, and yet which loses more researchers to emigration than any other western nation. The problem? Large salary gaps between US and Israeli institutions. As Daniel Hershkowitz, president of Bar-Ilan University put it, 'I don't see Israel being able to compete with what they offer in the United States.'"
"The problem? Large salary gaps between US and Israeli institutions. "
Nothing to do with the social/political situation in the middle east? I know the USA social and political situation is kind of crazy, but it seems to be a bit saner at the level of organized groups trying to kick each other off this or that piece of land. I suspect that this has at least SOME effect on people's decisions to emigrate.
There are plenty of good reasons to live here. Competition for academic jobs here is strong, despite the compensation. But the competition probably helps keep salaries low (although that's true everywhere).
Whatever the reason, low academic compensation helps keep the risk costs low of doing something crazy like founding a startup. So it cuts both ways.
In the meantime, all those drained brains keep contacts with home, meaning Israeli science keeps a higher level of contact with international academia, no bad thing in itself.
No need to exaggerate, the published figures warrant GP's question already.
Since 1985, it has provided nearly $3 billion in grants annually to Israel, with Israel being the largest annual recipient of American aid from 1976 to 2004 and the largest cumulative recipient of aid since World War II.
You have got to wonder why a relatively wealthy and developed nation should be the largest recipient. The same article also answers the question of why this is mostly not being spent on scientists' salaries:
Almost all U.S. aid to Israel is now in the form of military assistance, while in the past it also received significant economic assistance
source
The interesting question is whether this is really in the best interests of the US citizens, or just the senators and congressman who stand to lose their jobs if they get on the wrong side of AIPAC.
In addition many Individuals in the US are helping finance the bits of Israel which (even) the US government refuses to support officially, viz the illegal settlements (according to international law). They get to do this tax free in many cases though, which the elected government could easily stop if it wanted (and dared) to.
Of course there are lot of reflexive Israel supporters on /. so critical questions get modded down. But established political scientists are starting to ask the same things, see e.g. this.
Gosh, thanks. That must be why the other ships call me Meatfucker -- GCU Grey Area (Eccentric)
As an actual Israeli, I assure you that it is not a barren desert. There are 2 "major" deserts in the South of the country, and even in the desert there are huge green spots. A lot of the country is greener than almost any place you will find. Even some of the drier parts have been made green. For an American, I'd describe it more as the greener parts of Northern and Southern California depending on which part of the country. For a small country, there's a lot of variation.
Why would someone want to stay? As someone who grew up in Israel, left, and came back, I can answer that vs. the USA.
1. A different, more relaxing in certain senses lifestyles. Families in Israel tend to be closer I find, and there's more of a sense of community in most places. Even non-religious people for example tend to get together for Shabbat (Sabbath) dinner every week and eat great food, drink wine, chat, etc.
2. Different pace of life. Faster in some ways, slower in others. I feel people tend to value personal connections more as well. So much so, the entire country works on connections which can also be a problem.
3. Despite the racist and ridiculous posts in this article, Israelis have a deep connection to the land that dates back very far in most cases. It's hard to explain to an outsider, but it's always been our home. You can argue who owns what, but I can tell that a lot of land and other things have been usurped from my own family in the past. Our people have been massacred in Israel as well as obviously abroad, and we have a long memory. We have a tie to our land and for a lot of us, it is the only place we can feel safe. I feel safer in Israel than America, both in terms of crime and in general. No, there aren't suicide bombers and missiles landing everywhere, but on the other hand some places can be rather unsafe at times depending on political conditions. Even so, people fight on.
4. National Health Care and arguably better retirement options. This is just a disaster in America, sorry.
5. More freedoms in many ways. In Israel, you can start a campfire without a strike force of park rangers descending on you asking for permits and other nonsense.For better or worse, many day-to-day laws are treated more as a suggestion. Things get resolve, people get fined or even arrested, but it's a middle-eastern culture with democracy, which encourages a lot of "I'll do whatever I want." Take it or leave it.
6. Great food. I eat better at Cafes and Coffee shops in Israel than in many "fine" restaurants in America.
7. A mix of old world and new. It's comforting to me at least to be able to get things without chemicals, packaged 100 times, and that are actually fresh and homemade. At the same time, it's modern enough I can get most of everything
8. Culture. Israeli culture is very rich, and people don't really realize it until they're gone. This is why you see a lot of Israelis abroad hanging out with other Israelis, going to synagogues when before they were not religious, etc.
9. A belief in ourselves. The nasty things people say about Israel (ex: this thread) bring us closer together and sometimes make us realize it's the only place we can call home. It's amazing so many people care about such a tiny country and makeup such nonsense. You could at least read our history and visit a few times (better yet live here) before you make unfounded ridiculous comments.
10. Hot people. There's a lot of hot people. Really, there are. Good place to find a husband or wife.
Why leave?
1. Everything is very very expensive.
2. Did I mention everything is expensive? Well, maybe not street food.
3. Israeli universities are not be funded well. In fact, they are in many cases funded less than 40 years ago.
4. Children. It's a great place to raise them, but some parents just don't want to send their kids to the army. I view this as a sign of weakness and disloyalty, but on the other hand I can understand parents protecting their children. Mostly the army is not so heroi
Yours was a reasonable comment, rare for the topic on these forums. Let me fill in a bit:
The aid to Israel was tied to the 1978 peace treaty with Egypt. Same with the aid to Egypt. We pay them to keep the peace.
Peace and stability at least on part of the middle east is in our national interest, and many would argue it's worth a few bucks.
The aid is mostly in the form of American weapons, it acts like a subsidy to our own arms industry. Most of the money stays in the US.
It also keeps them from buying weapons from the Russians or Chinese. The region has been an arms sales showroom for a half century or more and we want them hooked up to our brand, evolving our technology.
The crazy thing is the idea of sealing a peace treaty with weapons transfers, but there are numerous social, financial, and geopolitical forces in play to keep it so.
It's far more complex than just lobbyists, not that they don't play their part.
I don't think it works that way. Much of the resentment felt towards the US throughout the ME is not just because of their one-sided support for Israel, but mostly because of their support for the brutal regimes of their countries (Saudi Arabia, Egypt, etc).
Gosh, thanks. That must be why the other ships call me Meatfucker -- GCU Grey Area (Eccentric)
I tend to agree, this is one of the biggest issues for me personally. There are quite a few other issues such as orthodocs Jews political influence and the fact that there are limited opportunities due to the small size of the country.
But overall the tech industry is pretty much entirely in Tel Aviv/Hertzelia areas (with limited niches in Haifa and even less in Jerusalem). If you look at the voting record the Tel Aviv/Hertzelia area is remarkably left wing liberal (against occupation) while the rest of the country is the exact polar opposite. This generally means the brains (and financial growth) are most likely liberals.
I wanted to immigrate myself but without a foreign nationality starting from scratch is really hard, plus my aging mother is also an anchor. I plan to do it immediately when opportunity presents itself.
Missiles landing in one's backyard is the other.
I'm an Israeli and I've had missiles falling near my house and that's usually not the reason.
The pay gap usually isn't either. Senior professors make $75k and above and it goes a long way in Israel.
Unfortunately, the budget of Harvard at $3.7B is higher than the budget of the entire Israeli academia and they only support 21,000 students. Tel Aviv university alone is nearly 30,000. Giving a scientist $5m for a lab is nearly impossible in Israel. That's why they don't come back after the post-doc.
The only way for socialism to work is via big government because it requires that the government take-to-give. Heck, the two largest budget items are Medicare/Medicaid and Social Security, which are both insolvent. And yes, both are even larger than Defense spending (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:U.S._Federal_Spending_-_FY_2011.png).
What you meant was Socialism =/= Communism, which is just socialism enforced by a government that controls all of the businesses.
What the US needs is less government, which includes a smaller defense budget, as well as less interference through social programming (intentionally not "programs"). The idea that we cannot go back to even 2008 levels of spending--before the supposedly one-time bailouts and otherwise huge deficits--is ludicrous. Socialism will break the back of an already weakened economy that cannot support the government that does not even bother trying to support itself by avoiding disgustingly high deficits.
I'm not sure everyone would agree that Israel is a Western nation (not that there is anything wrong with not being Western!!!) but the brain drain in many, many places makes Israel's look pretty meagre. I once read that some of the top Indian publicly funded institutions had 90%+ emigration rates a few years after graduation. Coming from another brain-drain country (New Zealand), these facts ended up changing my view on publicly funded tertiary education - why should a plumber, who started working and paying taxes at 18, pay for me to get a high quality 6-year tertiary education if he is not going to see any benefit from that? Sure, were I to contribute back to society through higher (absolute) taxes, providing employment, leadership or even just being culturally more aware from my education, there is real justification... But I, like many others, simply left straight after 6 years at university to somewhere with more people, closer to "the action" (Europe/US/East Asia). Israel is certainly closer to Europe than NZ but political reasons make it even more isolated...
The answer is obvious given the way Washington works. They have a very well run lobby group with good connections to people that set policy. That's the major difference between Israel and any other country with a large US expatriot population.
Wind back not very many years and there's all those people, including currently serving Senators, that were sending money to the IRA at a time when it was being used to buy materials for bombs. Morality tends to get ignored in US international relations.
You left out that the result of American military aid is that their armed forces are now dependent on the U.S. This gives the U.S. leverage to tell them to knock it the fuck off when they start getting in each other's business. In short, they have to keep the peace or they won't have much to fight with.
I'm an academic and just returned from a sabattical in Jerusalem. I can imagine a lot more reasons for a bright scientist to emigrate than just salary:
- Israel is still a very religious state, with e.g. no civil marriage (you marry before either the rabbi, the imam, the priest, etc, but no religion = no marriage and a mixed marriage means someone must convert). There is a minister of religious affairs and the state in waist-deep in a number of religious issues. Jewish religious schooling is mandatory in most schools. Citizenship is linked to religious/ethnic heritage.
- Israel is a segragationist state, with a large part of its citizens treated as second class (palestinians, bedouin) and there are extremist groups that physically attack people and institutions who strive for more integration and dialogue (see: price tag attacks).
- Israel is an occupying country, its army occupying a territory with over 4M people living in it. You cannot travel through Israel (much less live in it) without seeing the effects of this, in terms of checkpoints, barriers, and a general siege mentality in the population.
- Israel is surrounded by countries that are either hostile, in a civil war, or both. Jordan is an exception but if you go through Jordan you come to Iraq (hostile, civil war), Syira (hostile, civil war), or Saudi Arabia (just hostile). This contributes to the siege mentality in the population.
tl;dr: If you live in Israel, you live in country based on a tight coupling of church and state; you cannot go on holiday except by airplane; your children will face 2/3 years of military service with a good probability of serving in actual combat and occupation duties; whenever you drive over 100 miles you hit a wall (often quite literally); and almost half the people living in the area controlled by Israel are treated as second class at best. It is a bit like moving to 1950's South Carolina but with closed borders so the only way out is by flying through Europe. No, thanks.