For four decades, the Wexner Foundation — founded by billionaire philanthropists Leslie and Abigail Wexner — has been singularly devoted to the development of Jewish professional and volunteer leaders in North America and public leaders in Israel.
The foundation’s flagship Wexner Heritage Program works with local communities in North America to identify, recruit, organize and administer two-year cohort programs to educate Jewish communal leaders in the history, thought, traditions and contemporary challenges of the Jewish people. The Wexner Heritage Program is widely respected. And through the influence and work of the thousands of “Wexner graduates,” it has strengthened Jewish life in cities large and small throughout North America.
The Wexner Foundation runs seven leadership programs. Among them is the Wexner Israel Fellowship Program, which was established in 1989 in partnership with Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government. Each year, the program selects up to 10 Israeli public officials and/or nonprofit leaders to participate in leadership seminars while they pursue a mid-career Master of Public Administration degree at the Kennedy School.
The fellowship program provides Israel’s next generation of leaders advanced training in public management and leadership development and offers participants a unique opportunity to learn, grow and enhance their credentials in a program that is difficult to match.
More than 300 Israeli public officials have participated in the Israel Fellowship, including many who have gone on to become directors general of government ministries, generals and commanders in the military and top advisers to prime ministers. The Wexner Israel Fellowship Program has been very good for Isarel.
So, it was both surprising and confusing to learn last week that Israel’s National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir ordered the Israel Police to terminate all activity with the Wexner Israel Fellowship Program. According to Ben-Gvir — whose order went into immediate effect in a police agency he controls — work with the Wexner Foundation needed to stop because it is an organization that is involved with “obvious left-wing political movements.”
The immediate impact of the Ben-Gvir decree will prevent five Israeli police officers — with the rank of chief superintendent and above — from attending next year’s Harvard program for which they had been selected. The longer-term impact of the decree is unclear.
What is clear, however, is that Ben-Gvir is out of control. He has, once again, gone public and acted reflexively to punish some activity not aligned with his extremist agenda. He does so without regard to the impact his words and actions may have on the ministry and personnel he is supposed to manage or the citizens of the country he is supposed to serve.
We have no idea what Ben-Gvir’s gripe is with Leslie Wexner or the work of his foundation. And we wonder whether Ben-Gvir has any appreciation for how valuable Wexner’s program has been to Israel and his own ministry over the past 34 years.
Either way, as a relative novice to public service and a rookie minister, Ben-Gvir would benefit from training in the Wexner Program. Alas, even were he to be accepted, the program has been placed off-limits by the mercurial Czar of National Security.
