Richard Kruger

Agreement calls for unprecedented academic cooperation

Tel Aviv University has signed an agreement with Northwestern University declaring the two institutions “sister universities,” TAU announced on April 2. The academic cooperation pact was made official during a visit to the Tel Aviv campus by a delegation of top Northwestern officials led by Northwestern President Prof. Morton Schapiro.

New joint programs with TAU’s Sackler School of Medicine, Buchmann-Mehta School of Music, and the Department of Film and Television at the David and Yolanda Katz Faculty of the Arts will complement current programs linking Northwestern with TAU’s Recanati Business School and Buchmann Faculty of Law. The two institutions will expand their academic cooperation to include joint programs, collaborative research projects, combined seminars, and workshops, and shared guidelines for graduate degrees and student and faculty exchanges. Students will also be able to apply for joint programs in public health, law, and technology, in addition to joint study programs for dual academic degrees in business management and law.

Prof. Schapiro said he hoped the agreement would lead to a deeper academic relationship between the two universities. “The purpose of having such a large delegation in Israel is to strengthen academic cooperation between the two universities,” Prof. Schapiro said, praising the “high level of research” at TAU.

Tel Aviv University President Prof. Joseph Klafter thanked his counterpart for “determinedly and energetically standing with Israel” against attempts by academic organizations to boycott Israeli educational institutions for political reasons. Prof. Raanan Rein, vice president of TAU, said that the visit was an important element in the “strategy for the globalization of the university,” home to the largest number of international academic programs in Israel.