From censor@eesrv.ee.bgu.ac.il Tue Jun 26 11:49:17 2001 Date: Tue, 26 Jun 2001 11:48:28 +0300 From: dani censor To: ACADEMIA@TECHUNIX.TECHNION.AC.IL Subject: SEGEL-PLUS: Announcement Teddy Katz (fwd) =======> Posted to "Academia" =======> An unedited free subscription list =======> Copied to http://www.ee.bgu.ac.il/~academia =======> Caveat lector this is the haifa u. rector announcement on "segel plus" dani ... ---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Tue, 26 Jun 2001 11:02:17 +0200 From: Riva Friedman To: segel-plus@research.haifa.ac.il Subject: SEGEL-PLUS: Announcement Teddy Katz Dear Faculty Hereunder an announcement by the Rector regarding the findings of the Teddy Kattz Committee. The attachment is in Hebrew. The actual report can be found on the Homepage of the University Announcement by the Rector on the Matter of Teddy Katz In March 1998, a thesis was presented to the Dept. of Middle East History as a requirement for earning the M.A. degree by Mr. Teddy Katz. The subject of the work was "The Exodus of the Arabs from Villages at the Southern Foothills of the Carmel in 1948." The work passed referee processes and earned a grade of 97. After publication of the work, a libel suit was lodged against Mr. Teddy Katz by fighters of the Alexandroni Brigade for the systematic and tendentious falsification and distortion of interview data pertaining to Chapter D of his work, dealing with the conquest of the village of Tantura by fighters of this brigade. These charges emerged from a review of the transcripts of the tapes that Katz had made at the time of the interviews that he conducted with witnesses to the events that he had researched and following a comparison of the transcript with the version of the quotations in the body of the thesis that he had presented. After conclusion of the processes in the district court in regard to the matter of Mr. Teddy Katz, the University decided to take the following steps: I) To set up a committee that would examine whether the content of the tapes that Teddy Katz recorded was transmitted in a reliable manner to the text of the work. The members of the committee were Prof. Amatzia Baram, Dr. Ibrahim Geries, Prof. Rafi Talmon, and Prof. Yosef Nevo. Committee coordinator was Mr. Baruch Marzen, the academic Secretary. It should be noted that all the members of the committee are of senior academic standing and are fluent in Arabic. II) To set up a committee that would examine the customary procedures at the University of Haifa for advising and checking M.A. theses and doctoral dissertations and would investigate whether in the case of Mr. Teddy Katz's work, these procedures were maintained. III) To conduct academic discussions in the framework of the University's School of History on the question of the method of using oral documentation. These steps were intended to show that the University of Haifa was firm in its resolve to undertake a comprehensive and objective investigation of the episode. They were not, however, meant to respond to the question of whether or not a mass murder occurred in the course of the conquest of Tantura or in its aftermath. This question would necessarily be discussed in scholarly studies that historians would conduct, not in the examination of a university committee. In recent months, the School of History has held a number of well-attended symposia on subjects connected to the methods of historical research, particularly the issue of oral documentation. We are hopeful that these discussions will assist in clarifying the nature of historical research relying on oral testimonies and consolidating proper and valid research methods from the point of view of historical research and its results. The work of the committee checking thesis-advising procedures for M.A. and Ph.D. works still has not been completed, and will be in September. Recently the report of the committee examining the reliability of the text of work has been submitted to the Rector. The report is exhaustive and very deep, and the Rector thanks the members of the committee for their intensive and thorough work. The report was given over for publication in its entirety for the information of the University faculty and the public as a whole. The committee examining the reliability of transferring the content of the tapes and the notes that Katz had made to the text of his work focused on the chapter dealing with the matter of the mass murder at Tantura. It investigated 28 percent of the quotations whose subject was the mass murder and on which it relies in this chapter. While doing its work, the committee requested and received Mr. Katz's comments and explanations. The committee found cases in which a gap existed between the tapes and the notes and the text of the work, and divided them into three levels of severity. At the highest level, 14 cases were found, among them 9 cases the seriousness of which the committee was in no doubt. Included at this level of seriousness are cases in which elements of significant content were conveyed in the quotations but for which there was no mention in the tapes of the interviews or in the notes that Mr. Katz took in the course of them, and other cases in which Katz does not use significant data that belong to the central claim of the chapter. Similarly the committee found cases in which there are different gaps at a lower level of severity. The committee refrained from discussing the question of whether to attribute to Teddy Katz a systematic approach of tendentious distortion of the facts. Nevertheless, it notes that "the general picture of the situation that is obtained from a summary of all the gaps is certainly unflattering." This work "fails at the stage of placing the raw material for the reader's judgment, both in its organization according to strict criteria of classification and criticism and in what seems to be instances of non-honoring the testimonies of interviewees." The committee criticizes the scholarly level of the writing and argues that the liberty "that Teddy Katz has taken in processing selections of the testimonies in his work necessitates pointing to the whole problematics in the organization of work content that constitute real damage to its quality and indicate a low awareness by the writer to central aspects of the significance of critical scholarly writing." Even though the committee relates only to the shallow scientific quality of the work and to the responsibility of its writer, I do not wish to evade the possibility that it was also the function of the thesis adviser and its referees to uncover at least some of these academic failings and to warn them. I have decided, therefore, to call the adviser and referees for an academic clarification. The responsible body at the University of Haifa for M.A. theses and doctoral dissertations is the Graduate School. In light of the findings of the report, I have decided to transmit it to the School for deriving relevant conclusions. Throughout the episode, the University thought it proper for academic differences of opinion to be clarified in academic frameworks, and not in the courts. Accordingly the University requested the tapes even prior to the legal debate; unfortunately this request was turned down. Even after the start of the legal proceedings, the University proposed setting up an independent investigative committee to clarify the veracity of Katz's arguments. Again, to our sorrow, this suggestion was not accepted. The University of Haifa is not deterred from examining itself and admitting failings in the event that they exist. In any wide-ranging, multifarious activity, errors occur, and that is only natural. We must draw the appropriate conclusions from revelation of failings and correct our procedures in a way that such failures will be prevented in the future. The episode gained at the time much publicity in the media, which finds it easy to present passionate populist positions that are baseless. We are happy that we were not drawn into this dispute, but rather throughout the process took considered and fair steps obligated by the complexity of the subject. Prof. Aaron Ben-Ze'ev Rector, University of Haifa ================================== Ms. Riva Friedman Secretary to the Rector, University of Haifa Mt. 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