CLASSICAL STUDIES is under siege at Bar Ilan University:

Will classical studies still be here in 10 years?
By Ofri Ilani (Haaretz)

Many departments in Israeli universities have shrunk in recent years, but few have sustained the kind of mortal blow taken by Bar-Ilan's Department of Classical Studies. In under five years, the number of faculty positions was cut by 40 percent.

Department head Prof. David Schaps, who specializes in Greek and Roman history, recalls another period when classical culture was neglected. "We call it the Dark Ages. It was only 1,000 years later that the value of that knowledge was recognized again, and not all of it could be reconstructed," he said. "The same thing could happen to us. There are areas that don't interest our generation, and we are allowing them to disappear. They might interest people in the future, and they won't forgive us."

Bar-Ilan, Tel Aviv University and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem all have small classics departments. Bar-Ilan's is now competing for the honor of being the university's smallest department. At the start of the decade, it had 4.5 faculty positions. Now there are 2.75 positions.

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