Academia: an ivory tower or a lighthouse?

摘要

Much has happened in the State of Israel since the dramatic press conference of January 31, 2017, in which Haifa Mayor Yona Yahav breeched the Supreme Court directive and exposed the classified "Professors' Report" (also known as the "Keinan Report") that recommended emptying the 12,000-ton liquid ammonia tank located in a densely populated area in Haifa Bay. The past year has seen more than 1000 newspaper articles on the ammonia affair, hundreds of TV and radio discussions, public debates, rallies and mass demonstrations of angry citizens, and the story is far from over. All three levels of the Israeli court system - the Haifa Magistrate Court, the District Court and the Supreme Court - have decided decommissioning of the old ammonia tank and banning marine imports of bulk liquid ammonia to Israel.