Another model minority? Immigrant scholars from the Former Soviet Union in Israeli academia

• In Event: Issues in Higher Education Institutions: New Missions and Challenges

Proposal

Another model minority? Immigrant scholars from the Former Soviet Union in Israeli academia

Victoria Kot, Miri Yemini, and Katerina Bodovski

School of Education, Tel Aviv University, Ramat Aviv, Tel Aviv, 69978, Israel

Numerous studies have documented the various ways minorities find their ways into senior academic positions despite the structural discrimination, prejudice, or racism often found in such elite and conservative spheres. Many of these studies dealt with faculty of colour in traditionally white institutions in the US, UK, and Canada. Fewer studies have delved into more subtle relations of dominance and power struggles in less studied settings (e.g., Asia or Africa) and even fewer studies confronted less visible minorities. In Israel, research has already highlighted the scarcity of Palestinian Israeli scholars at Israeli, and the (lack of) representation of Jewish professors of North African origin has been examined. Almost no research attention has been devoted to Russian-origin academics in Israel, despite the large influx of immigration from Former Soviet Union countries since the break-up of the USSR.
Three decades have now passed since the largest Aliyah in Israeli history, during which some one million Russian-speaking Jews immigrated to Israel, increasing the country’s Jewish population by approximately 20%. In the former Soviet Union (FSU), Jews were among the most educated ethnic groups throughout Soviet history. Indeed, many immigrants to Israel from the FSU previously held academic positions in their country of origin. Over 150,000 such immigrants arrived in Israel with a master’s or doctoral degree – a relatively high number for the contemporary Israeli population – and those immigrants were determined to pass down their educational resources to their children.
On the receiving end, Israeli society displayed an ambivalent attitude toward this population, alternately perceiving immigrants from the FSU as weak and as strong. These immigrants had low economic status; yet most were highly educated and therefore brought great human capital potential. The ambivalent attitude toward these immigrants also stemmed from vast cultural differences; since the immigrants’ cultural capital was foreign, the local population faced difficultly distinguishing between high and low cultural cues in the immigrants’ way of life. As a result of this ambivalence, sociologists noted two distinct possibilities for the integration of these immigrants into Israeli society – a ‘plain and simple’ integration into the Ashkenazi population or a segregation and subsequent creation of an independent subculture, which perceives itself as at least equivalent to the Ashkenazi hegemon.
The treatment these immigrants received from Israeli society at large is particularly important, given the stratification of power in Israel. Since the establishment of the State of Israel through the late 1980s, the country’s small academic elite, with the support of the government, managed to operate state universities as an autonomy. Its members controlled and oversaw teaching, research and grant funding, faculty appointments, academic training, and the awarding of degrees. Universities were depicted as elitist educational institutions most accessible to people of high socio-economic, ethnic and gender status; namely, to Ashkenazi men. The group of Israelis known as the ‘academic elite’ was given the power to set overarching societal goals or to participate in planning them, and so wielding great influence over economic, political, and social spheres.
This study examines the integration processes of Israeli university faculty members of FSU origins of the ‘1.5 generation’ – those who immigrated as children – highlighting the social constrains they encountered, and the ways they constructed their agency during their professional careers. The study utilizes a narrative approach, emphasizing personal and professional life stories of 15 immigrant scholars. The stories as told from their own perspectives, focusing on the subjective process of integration and professional identity formation. We employ the notion of cultural, social and resilience capitals to shed light on integration hurdles faced by immigrants – from a community largely perceived as a model minority within Israeli society – when accessing elite social spaces.
Our findings highlight the differences in the cultural, social and resistance capitals required and valued in the new environment. Often these young intellectuals have undertaken tremendous efforts to integrate into the elitist and exclusive arena of Israeli academia. As a result, they have been forced to creatively forge new forms of capitals, appropriate to Israeli society, sometimes by assimilating completely, and sometimes by rebelling and emphasizing their separate identity, as well as reaching out to international colleagues.
Our study is unique since it fills an important gap in the academic literature because no study has considered the needs of the 1.5 generation within academia; it bridges this gap and provides a voice for this generation and sheds light on integration hurdles faced by immigrants.

Authors

• Victoria Kot, Tel Aviv University

• Miri Yemini, Tel Aviv University

• Katerina Bodovski, Penn State University