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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.'"
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.
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.
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...
As everywhere in the world the dominant language of discourse in science and engineering is English, and US universities continue to dominate the lists of best and most influential institutions of learning.
If you look around at MIT you will note that 50%-60% of the PhD. students are from abroad. And when they get their degree, they see all kinds of attractive job opportunities right where they live. From start-ups to established companies. And yes, it's one of the ways in which the US attracts talent. It out-competes almost everyone else by offering top-notch education, top-notch research, and top-notch jobs. And that isn't about to change (barring short-sighted politics such as de-funding research).
But perhaps the most important of all: the US really does offer anyone a chance to earn their way solely on personal merit. And that's something very precious that's not available in many other countries where "who you know" counts for more than "what you know".
So yes, there is a tremendous pull. But before you bemoan the big bad US of A luring away all the talent, please realize that there is also (in the case of Israel) a substantial push.
Good friends of mine made Aliyah to Israel about 30 years ago. They were well-educated (an economist and a psychologist) learned Hebrew, did their Miluim (military service), one as a private the other as an officer, and found careers in Tel-Aviv.
What they saw around 15 years ago was a country that increasingly transformed itself from a Western country to a Middle Eastern country. Political polarization, rise of religious ultra-orthodoxy, privileges for religious people (e.g. Torah students exempt from the same military service that takes about a month per year from others), .
What they also saw was a country that was basically unwilling to reach a sustainable accommodation with the Palestinians despite the demographic, economic, legal, and humanitarian issues. They felt the consequences of that in person when their reserve army duties took them to e.g. the Gaza strip where they, in army uniform and armed, would have to face off against 16-18 year old Palestinian protestors / rioters and wield batons (or worse) against people who had no education to speak of, almost no wealth, no opportunities or prospects worth mentioning, no realistic way out, and no serious hopes for improvement. If that were a transitional phase, it would be bearable, but was it? It didn't look that way and it still doesn't.
Attempts to persuade the political majority to reach a sustainable settlement did not succeed (if there were any easy and simple solutions they would have been embraced long ago) and indeed a sustainable settlement seemed drifting further away all the time with the (in part religiously motivated) Eretz Israel (Big Israel) idea.
So they were left with the prospect of staying in an intransigent, polarizing and increasingly besieged country where their children would face the same difficulties, only worse, and without the frictionless alternative of having a double passport.
So they decided to leave and they are not alone. Obviously that segment of the population with the most portable assets (intellect) has the best prospects of leaving.
That's the "push" part of the equation.
So, yes, there's brain-drain but a lively exchange of people and ideas is (as I see it) needed for Israel's mental health. Also there are reasons for the brain-drain that have little to do with big bad US gobbling up all the talent.
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.