Features
The Davidson Institute at the Weizmann Institute is playing a huge role in advancing an appreciation for the study of science
By BERNIE BELLAN Dr. Liat Ben-David is a scientist who has devoted a good part of her life to educating people about science.
Having graduated with a degree in Molecular Biology from the Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot, Israel, in 1991, for the past seven years Dr. Ben-David has been CEO of the Davidson Institute, which is the educational arm of the Weizmann Institute.
A fourth-generation sabra, Dr. Ben-David speaks flawless English without a trace of a Hebrew accent, although I made the mistake of asking her whether she was originally from the US since, if she hadn’t corrected me, I would have sworn she was either American or Canadian-born.
Dr. Ben-David was in Canada recently to speak at an event in Toronto sponsored by the Weizmann Institute focusing on the power of science education to help foster resiliency in children and youth. She took time out from her busy schedule to participate in a Zoom call during which she explained what the Davidson Institute is all about – and how science education has come to play an even more important role in the lives of many Israelis over the past 11 months than it had previously.
To begin with, here is some information about the Davidson Institute taken from the Weizmann Institute website: “The Davidson Institute of Science Education is a non-profit organization that serves as the educational arm of the Weizmann Institute of Science. We believe in connecting people to science, and therefore we initiate, organize and operate a wide range of educational programs. We strive to be a professional epicenter for students, parents and the general public, as well as for teachers and academics, in both government and education.”
“We create activities for all sectors of Israeli society,” Dr. Ben-David explained. Not only is “science education part of our mission,” she continued, “we believe it is part of our responsibility to create a more logical society for everyone.”
There are “three components of scientific literacy” that the Davidson Institute promotes, Dr. Ben-David said: “knowledge, skills, and values.”
“You have to know which values you want to strengthen,” she noted, “so we can help make better lives.”
To that end, the Davidson Institute has made inroads into all facets of Israeli society. “We try to engage everyone in Israel,” Dr. Ben-David says. “We work in both Hebrew and Arabic.”
The Weizmann Institute -and through its education arm, the Davidson Institute, is involved in practically all areas of scientific endeavour. If you look at the Davidson Institute website (https://davidson.weizmann.ac.il/en) you will find articles on a dizzying range of subjects – from spacewalks to head surgeries in Ancient Egypt, to childhood mental disorders and so on, all written in an easy-to-understand English. You won’t be intimidated into thinking this is way too academic to understand.
The goal of the Davidson Institute is to inspire people to view science as a relevant part of their lives, Dr. Ben-David said. Educators from the institute go out to even the most remote communities in Israel, as well as make deliberate efforts to target “at-risk youths.”
Our goal is to “build esteem and self-confidence” within those young people, she explained, many of whom have dropped out of school.
While not all of them will succeed, the Davidson Institute has had a “40% success rate” in getting those drop-outs to return to school, Dr. Ben-David added.
“Science is a healing tool,” she observed.
Now, more than ever, since life in Israel has been so disrupted as a result of everything that has happened since October 7, educators from the Davidson Institute have been dealing with new challenges.
“During the past year, unfortunately, we have found ourselves working with displaced families” who have had to leave their homes” as a result of the Hamas attacks of Oct. 7th on the south as well as the attacks posed by Hezbollah in the north, Dr. Ben-David observed. “We are giving them some sense of normality and stability.”
For instance, she noted that “we’ve created seminars at Davidson” where students who have been displaced from their home schools “are given a week where we give them a full blast of science.”
“They work on science projects that are included in matriculation,” Dr. Ben-David explained.
And, educators going out from Davidson aren’t only working with high school students. “We work with kids in elementary schools age 10 and up,” she said, “also with their teachers.”
Those teachers may not have a particular background in science, Dr. Ben-David explained.
Davidson educators also don’t restrict their attention to trained teachers.
“We work with instructors who are not professional teachers on giving them instruction in science,” she noted.
I asked Dr. Ben-David to give me an example in which someone from Davidson has reached out to a child who has been traumatized by what has been happening in Israel since October 7.
She told me of one particular young girl who had been so afraid that she was going to be killed by a missile that she spent the better part of her day hiding under her bed.
Educators from Davidson came to visit the child and found out that she loved Harry Potter books. They “discussed with her the science of Harry Potter magic,” and whether there was something that might actually be plausible about some of the magic.
“At first she just peeked out at us,” Dr. Ben-David continued, “then she started asking questions” – and soon she was fully engaged in talking with the instructors.
The Davidson Institute runs several programs that aim to attract students, both from within Israel and beyond.
For instance, Dr. Ben-David pointed to a “gap year program,” now in its sixth year of existence – for high school graduates where Davidson sends them to remote communities as “science ambassadors.”
And, including during this past year, Davidson also has “several international programs” for students “from all over the world,” she explained. Not only do those students get to do science, “they get to know Israel and each other,” Dr. Ben-David said.
There are still many online programs for students, she noted, including one called “Windows to the Future,” in which “once a month students from all over the world meet a Davidson scientist” online.
“Some countries have approached us to develop different pedagogies,” Dr. Ben-David said. “Covid didn’t stop us; neither did the war.”
I wondered though, whether the trend toward academic boycotts of Israeli institutions of higher learning and, concomitantly, Israeli academics, has had a very adverse effect on Davidson Institute programs that reach out beyond Israel.
“We don’t ignore the elephant in the room,” Dr. Ben-David admitted but, in addition to the “100,000 participants” Davidson Institute programs have in Israel itself – in partnership with most municipalities, we reach another “3 million” from Israel and outside digitally, she said.
While Israel’s image in much of the world has suffered greatly as a result of its war in Gaza, Israel’s reputation as a scientific powerhouse has not diminished – and institutions like the Davidson Institute are serving to maintain that image throughout the world.
Features
Bias in America’s Colleges Produced Modern Anti-Zionism
By HENRY SREBRNIK Jon A. Shields, Yuval Avnur, and Stephanie Muravchik, professors at the Claremont Colleges in California, have just completed a study, “Closed Classrooms? An Analysis of College Syllabi on Contentious Issues,” published July 10, 2025, that draws on a database of millions of college syllabi to explore how professors teach three of the most contentious topics: racial bias in the criminal justice system, the Israel-Palestine conflict, and the ethics of abortion.
They used a unique database of college syllabi collected by the “Open Syllabus Project” (OSP). The OSP has amassed millions of syllabi from around the world primarily by scraping them from university websites. They date as far back as 2008, though a majority are from the last ten years. Most of the data comes from universities in the United States, Britain, Canada, and Australia.
“Since all these issues sharply divide scholars, we wanted to know whether students were expected to read a wide or narrow range of perspectives on them. We wondered how well professors are introducing students to the moral and political controversies that divide intellectuals and roil our democracy. Not well, as it turns out.”
In the summary of their findings, “Professors Need to Diversify What They Teach,” they report that they found a total lack of ideological diversity. “Across each issue we found that the academic norm is to shield students from some of our most important disagreements.”
Teaching of Israel and Palestine is, perhaps no surprise, totally lopsided, and we’ve seen the consequences since October 7, 2023. Staunchly anti-Zionist texts — those that question the moral legitimacy of the Israeli state — are commonly assigned. Rashid Khalidi, the retired professor of Modern Arab Studies at Columbia, is the most popular author on this topic in the database. A Palestinian American and adviser to the Palestine Liberation Organization delegation in the 1990s, Khalidi places the blame on Israel for failing to resolve the conflict and sees the country’s existence as a consequence of settler-colonialism.
The problem is not the teaching of Khalidi itself, as some on the American right might insist. To the contrary, it is important for students to encounter voices like Khalidi’s. The problem is who he is usually taught with. Generally, Khalidi is taught with other critics of Israel, such as Charles D. Smith, Ilan Pappé, and James Gelvin.
Not only is Khalidi’s work rarely assigned alongside prominent critics, those critics seem to hardly get taught at all. They include Israel: A Concise History of a Nation Reborn by Daniel Gordis, a professor at Shalem College in Israel. Gordis’s book appears only 22 times in the syllabus database. Another example is the work of Efraim Karsh, a prominent historian. His widely cited classic, Fabricating Israeli History, appears just 24 times.
For most students, though, any exposure to the conflict begins and ends with Edward Said’s Orientalism, first published in 1978. Said is the intellectual godfather of so many of today’s scholars of the Middle East, thanks in no small part to this classic book. Said was a Palestinian-American academic, literary critic, and political activist from a prominent Christian family. Educated at Princeton and Harvard Universities, two of America’s most distinguished centres of higher learning, he taught at Columbia University, another Ivy League institution, until his death in 2003.
Said was no crude antisemite. His writings were aimed at academics and intellectuals and he has, in my opinion, done more damage to the Jewish people than anyone else after 1945. Said claimed to be the first scholar to “culturally and politically” identify “wholeheartedly with the Arabs.” But he was also a political activist for the Palestinian movement opposing the existence of Israel.
Said warned PLO leader Yasir Arafat that if the conflict remained local, they’d lose. Join “the universal political struggle against colonialism and imperialism,” with the Palestinians as freedom fighters paralleling “Vietnam, Algeria, Cuba, and black Africa,” he advised.
(In this he was not the first, though. Fayez Sayegh, a Syrian intellectual who departed for the United States and completed his Ph.D. at Georgetown University in 1949, preceded him. Also an academic, his 1965 monograph Zionist Colonialism in Palestine stands as the first intellectual articulation of Zionism as a settler colonial enterprise, arguing that the analytical frameworks applied to Vietnam and Algeria apply equally to Palestine. The treatise situated Zionism within European colonialism while presenting it as uniquely pernicious.)
Israel’s post–Six-Day War territorial expansion helped Said frame Israel as “an occupying power” in a 1979 manifesto titled The Question of Palestine. Alleging racial discrimination as the key motive was a means of transforming the “Zionist settler in Palestine” into an analogue of “white settlers in Africa.” That charge gained traction in a post-Sixties universe of civil rights, anti-imperialism, anti-colonialism, and Western self-abnegation. The work sought to turn the tables on the prevailing American understanding of Israel: It is not, in fact, an outpost of liberal democracy or refuge from antisemitism, but an instrument of white supremacy.
Orientalism popularized a framework through which today’s advocates on behalf of Palestinians understand their struggle against the state of Israel and the West generally. Said casts the Western world as the villains of history and peoples of the East as its noble victims.
The essence of the book, Said concluded, is the “ineradicable distinction between Western superiority and Oriental inferiority.” It falsely affirms “an absolute and systematic difference between the West, which is rational, developed, humane, superior, and the Orient, which is aberrant, undeveloped, inferior.”
So it was impossible to take Zionism seriously as one among the myriad nationalist movements that emerged in the nineteenth century, much less to see Israel itself as a land of refugees or the ancestral homeland of Jews. And, indeed, Said’s Orientalism singles out Israel for special rebuke, suggesting that the state could be justified only if one accepted the xenophobic ideology at the core of Western civilization. Israel’s defenders, particularly those who lament the lack of democracy in the Middle East and fault Arabs for their militancy, represent the “culmination of Orientalism.”
Said is widely acknowledged as the godfather of the emerging field of postcolonial studies, and his views have profoundly shaped the study of the Middle East. Said also inspired – and in some cases directly mentored – a generation of anti-Zionist U.S. scholars whose dominance in the academic study of the area is unquestionable today.
The political left that emerged trained itself to read every conflict as the aftershock of colonialism. The ideological narrative of oppression and resistance allowed even the jihadist to become a post-colonial rebel.
It’s hard to overstate the academic influence of Orientalism. The authors note that “As of this writing, it has been cited nearly 90 thousand times. It is also the 16th most assigned text in the OSP database, appearing in nearly 16 thousand courses.” Orientalism is among the most popular books assigned in the United States, showing up in nearly 4,000 courses in the syllabus database. Said’s work appears in 6,732 courses in U.S. colleges and universities.
But although it was a major source of controversy, both then and now, it is rarely assigned with any of the critics Said sparred with, like Bernard Lewis, Ian Buruma, or Samuel Huntington. Instead, it’s most often taught with books by fellow luminaries of the postmodern left, such as Frantz Fanon and Judith Butler.
All these ideas are now embedded into diversity, equity, and inclusion identity politics, and “humanitarian” outrage over supposed Israeli “settler-colonialism,” “genocide,” and “apartheid.”
The ground for the massive pro-Hamas college and university encampments, and attacks on Jewish students, was prepared decades ago. The long march of progressives through American institutions over the past decades has taken its toll on society.
Henry Srebrnik is a professor of political science at the University of Prince Edward Island.
Features
Exchange Rate Factors: What Global Events Mean for Savvy Investors
When Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, it created ripples in all financial markets, including currency markets. The Euro weakened while the dollar surged and emerging market currencies wobbled. Global factors can quickly affect financial markets and shake established trends. Apart from such rare events, currencies tend to change their price because of interest rates, inflation, and overall investor confidence. For investors managing money abroad, understanding these movements is critical to avoid losses and mitigate risks.
Below, we will break down how global political, economic, and cultural events influence exchange rates, with insights for savvy investors.
Economic factors
There are several key exchange rate factors with a consistent history of shaking financial markets. These factors include inflation, interest rates, trade balances, employment rates, and so on. Since economic factors are shaping markets almost daily, we start with those.
Inflation and interest rates
Inflation and interest rates are closely connected as one can easily affect the other. When inflation rises, central banks step in and raise interest rates to reduce inflation, and when inflation is lower, central banks can lower interest rates to make borrowing money cheaper. As a result, investors closely monitor these two metrics to anticipate changes in interest rates. Higher inflation makes currencies weaker, and whenever banks change the rates, the changes are immediately reflected in global currency rates. In the United States, the Federal Reserve is the central bank that sets interest rates in the country.
Trade balances and economic growth
A country that exports more than it imports has a stronger demand for its currency. More demand equals a stronger currency. However, the Japanese yen was always weaker against the dollar because the BOJ of Japan tends to have super low rates near 0 to support its exporters. Economic growth also increases demand for local currency as more investors try to invest in the country’s economy. Long-term investors often track this data to detect early signs of any changes in currency strength.
Political and geopolitical factors
Elections, sanctions, and overall political stability are also crucial factors. If the country gets under sanctions, its economy crumbles and its currency becomes inflationary, losing its value quickly. Elections are also crucial for a currency’s strength. Geopolitical events can have a serious impact on the currency as well. The most obvious example is the 2016 Brexit events that made GBP lose its value rapidly and violently. Global conflicts, such as wars, can seriously impact global financial assets, especially currency markets. When tensions are high, safe-haven currencies like USD and CHF (Swiss Franc) become very popular among investors as they seek a safe place to protect their capital.
Cultural and social factors
People like tourists, workers, and diaspora communities can shape currencies as well. Tourism usually drives seasonal demand, and countries that are popular destinations during certain seasons experience their currency appreciation as demand spikes. The perception matters as countries seen as safe and opportunity-rich tend to attract more investors, solidifying their currency strength.
Technology and innovation
Technology is seriously affecting everything, especially the financial sector. Digital payment systems, blockchain technology, and fintech startups have made it easy and swift to move money around. Cryptos and stablecoins enable investors to protect their capital using stablecoins during volatile times. The latest trend among banks is to work on CBDCs, which signals a new era where national currencies are blended with technology and blockchain. Despite this, currencies, even in their crypto form, will continue to be influenced by all major factors mentioned above, and knowing how these factors impact your currency is key to keeping your capital safe from risks.
Practical lessons for savvy investors
So, what do all these factors teach us about global currency rates and investing strategies? The key lies in proper preparations and anticipation. Monitoring macro trends, policy announcements, and major geopolitical and political developments is critical.
Diversify
The number one method which is used by professional investors is diversification. This simply means to spread your risks across a basket of assets. By not investing all your capital in one instrument, you can mitigate risks. If one asset experiences a loss, other ones will counter it with returns. Building a diversified portfolio is key to properly diversifying. For example: divide your capital to buy stocks, commodities, currencies, and cryptos so that if one fails to perform, others will counter it. This ensures a stable income without unnecessary losses in the long run.
Hedge
Forex options and ETFs are great hedging assets. Forex options let investors lock in an exchange rate for a future date, which is very useful if you expect volatility but want stability. Currency ETFs, on the other hand, track specific currencies or a basket of currencies and allow easy trading or protection without trading forex directly, but they are still risky.
Monitor the economic calendar
Economic calendar is a free online tool that aggregates important macroeconomic news data such as interest rate decisions, CPI, inflation, employment rates, central bank announcements and speeches, and other crucial information. By monitoring them, investors can always know when important news data will be released, and they can postpone their investment decisions to avoid volatile times and only invest after the main trend is determined.
Features
The Canadian Dollar is on a slow decline. Should you save in euros or US dollars instead?
The Canadian dollar has been losing its value against the dollar this year. For Canadians, this raises a simple question: if your CAD is losing ground, is it better to move savings into euros or U.S. dollars, especially bonds, stocks, or a carry-trade strategy? Carry-trade strategy in this context means to borrow in CAD and invest it in the USA or the EU zone. This is a complex matter, and to understand where the CAD is, how attractive other currencies might be, we need to analyze these currencies more deeply. Below, we will walk you through the data, practical costs, and risks so you can reach a usable conclusion after reading this guide.
Quick snapshot – What the markets say right now
Recently, the Canadian dollar has hit multi-month lows due to weaker oil prices and a post-Fed (U.S. Federal Reserve) market reaction (which raised the rates, making the CAD weaker against the dollar). Canada’s central bank has cut its policy rate to 2.25%, while the Fed’s fund rate remains notably higher at about 3.75-4%. The ECB (European Central Bank) main interest rates are lower than the Fed’s and near the low-to-mid 2% range. While the Euro currency to USD rates remain mostly predictable, due to higher US bond yield rates, the EUR remains stronger, still. The U.S. 10-year Treasuries are around 4.1%, Canada’s 10-year near 3.2%, and Germany’s 10-year around 2.7%, meaning that today the USD-denominated bonds have the highest nominal yield among the three. As a result, the dollar seems much more attractive when it comes to bond yields and stocks.
Bonds – Which currency is the best for fixed income?
The short answer is: USD bonds. When it comes to nominal yield alone, US bonds beat almost all other competitors. U.S. government bond yields (10-year) are noticeably higher than Canadian and German/Eurozone bond yields right now. As a result, US bond buyers have more income potential than Canada and the EU. Euro-area core yields are lower, meaning they are paying less than the USA.
However, nominal yield does not mean it is guaranteed real return, and metrics like inflation, currency rates, and hedging costs can impact potential returns directly. If you buy USD bonds but the dollar falls against the CAD, currency losses will most likely wipe out the higher yield rate. If the Fed lowers its rates, it will make the dollar weaker against the CAD and EUR.
Another challenge is that, if you live and spend in Canada, you are using CAD, and when exchanging it for dollars, you get exposed to foreign currency rate risks, which must not be underestimated.
Stocks – Euro or dollar?
Both the EUR and USD have their advantages. USD has strong liquidity and strong long-term performance, while EUR equities offer valuation opportunities and recent relative strength.
Why USD?
The U.S. market remains the most liquid stock market with strong earnings for many tech and large companies. This makes USD stocks very attractive for long-term-oriented investors. S&P has been rising historically, and even after crashes, it often recovers its value relatively quickly.
Why EUR?
European indexes have performed well this year and in many cases cost less than their U.S. counterparts. While cheaper does not always mean better, these indexes still have some growth potential. Some major banks in the EU zone, together with industries, have recovered strongly with a recent focus on military manufacturing, making many EU stocks very attractive, together with local indexes.
However, here is a caveat: if you are using CAD daily and it loses its value against the euro, the returns from euro holdings might shrink, exposing you to greater currency risks.
Carry-trade analysis – Is it viable to borrow CAD and invest it in USD or EUR?
The basic promise of carry-trade is simple yet powerful: you borrow cheaper currency and invest it in currencies with higher yields. In our case, is it lucrative to borrow in CAD and invest in either EUR or USD? To answer this question, we need to look at numbers. BoC policy rate is 2.25%, Fed funds from 3.75%, U.S 10-yr is 4.1%, Canada 10-yr is 3.2%. If we deduct Canadian rates from the U.S. rates, we get around 1.8% positive before costs. So, in theory, it could be lucrative to invest CAD in USD assets using a carry trade. Since the ECB has around 2%, it is not profitable to use a carry-trade strategy for the euro.
The bottom line
While the CAD has been weakening lately, it is still not cheap enough to naively invest in USD or EUR. However, if you want a pure yield and can tolerate foreign exchange rate risks, USD bonds are more attractive today. When it comes to stocks, USD equities provide stable and liquid markets. If you want valuation potential and diversification, then euro equities have become more attractive this year. When it comes to carry-trade strategies, the USD remains more lucrative than the euro, but on paper, traders and investors should evaluate all the risks and costs before investing in any currency.
In the end, Canadians who have CAD for their daily costs should be careful when trying to get exposure to other markets. US bonds, US stocks, US carry-trade, and EU stocks remain attractive choices for experienced investors.