Council for Higher Education denies Ariel University a medical school

The Planning and Budgets Committee of Israel’s Council for Higher Education, which oversees and accredits Israeli colleges and universities, reverses an earlier decision granting a university in the West Bank town of Ariel the right to open a medical school.

The expansion of Ariel University was a priority for Education Minister Naftali Bennett, who spent much of the past four years as the leader of the pro-settlement Jewish Home faction in the Knesset before leaving last month to found the New Right party ahead of the April 9 elections.

The committee was instructed to vote on the question again after Attorney General Avichai Mandelblit ruled that one of the members who voted the last time, council deputy chair Rivka Wadmany Shauman, an education professor, was being considered for promotion at Ariel at the time of the vote.