FAQ

Shalem College is an elite undergraduate institution of higher education established in Jerusalem in 2013. We aim to prepare a core of leading Israeli citizens dedicated to lives of influence and service, and to the dual, Jewish and democratic character of their state. 

Shalem College exists to provide elite young Israelis with the intellectual, cultural, and ethical formation they need, as human beings and as citizens, to live worthy and purposeful lives and to advance the flourishing of the State of Israel.

Israel today is a well-established and prosperous country. Its challenges are no longer only those of survival and subsistence but, increasingly, questions of meaning, identity, and purpose and the prudent exercise of sovereign power in a complex world. Israel’s best young people need an education that will enable them to meet these challenges: they need to learn who they are and where they have come from; they need the deep learning, intellectual skills, and habits of heart and mind provided by a liberal education adapted to modern Israeli life.

Shalem College, unique in Israel, exists to provide that education. It delivers serious intellectual and cultural formation to an elite group of smart, ambitious, and public-spirited men and women, who will exert a diffuse yet oversized influence on the national future.

Through a demanding Core Curriculum, Shalem students grapple with the enduring questions of the human experience and earn their own rich and complicated inheritances as Jews, Israelis, and children of the West by engaging deeply with the great texts of the Western, Israeli, and Jewish traditions. They learn in small seminars taught by master teachers and featuring open, fearless, and searching conversation.

Shalem students acquire the liberating and practical skills of deep reading, careful speaking, responsive listening, coherent reasoning, and clear writing. They develop habits of critical thinking, intellectual humility, self-reflection, and sober judgment, equipping themselves to tackle tough problems that resist simplistic solutions. They learn to ask not only how, but why; not only can we, but should we.

Through majors in Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies, Strategy, Diplomacy, and Security, and Philosophy and Jewish Thought, students gain the knowledge that prepares them for influence in areas critical to Israel’s future: the neighborhood, geopolitical challenges, and national identity. And they avail themselves of numerous opportunities to manifest their capacities for leadership within the College and in projects of local and national significance.   

Shalem’s graduates emerge prepared to shape Israel’s future, informed by deep understanding of the guiding principles and competing values that are our national heritage and knowledgeable about Israel’s situation in the Middle East and its place in the world. Through careers in government, education, culture, academia, journalism, business, high-tech, and social entrepreneurship, Shalem’s graduates are advancing the prosperity, culture, and character of their country.

Shalem inducts students into an intellectual conversation spanning millennia and comprising the seminal ideas of the Western and Jewish traditions. Through our Core Curriculum—the only one of its kind in the Jewish state—we encourage the exploration of great philosophical, literary, theological, artistic, and scientific works; the development of critical-thinking skills and a commitment to civil discourse; and the cultivation of those habits of mind required of leaders in a liberal democracy.

Our interdisciplinary major in Philosophy and Jewish Thought prepares students to wrestle with Israel’s competing Jewish and democratic identities, while our major in Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies enables them to understand the Islamic tradition, the contemporary Arab world, and Israel’s place in this complex region. Unique among Israeli departments of Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies, ours insists on fluency in Arabic, ensuring that our graduates can engage the Arabic-speaking world in an unfiltered way. We also offer a major in Strategy, Diplomacy, and Security, established in response to Israel’s need for strategic thinkers who can meet their nation’s challenges with historical perspective, big-picture thinking, and effective leadership.

In the coming years, we also plan to apply for a fourth major, in Economics and Policy. Like the other three, this program, too, will be unique to Shalem, and will aim to address the most complex challenges facing the Jewish state.

First, our degree takes three and a half years, which is a half-year more than that required for most degrees at other Israeli colleges and universities. This allows for our students to cover the full range of disciplines in our Core Curriculum, even as they study their chosen major in depth.

In addition, the courses in our Core are taught in small, dynamic seminars. We require both attendance and participation, and maintain a small faculty-to-student ratio that enables real mentorship and meaningful engagement.

Shalem also features a comprehensive citizenship curriculum, including an experiential course on the major challenges in Israeli society and an accelerator for socially minded entrepreneurship. We actively encourage student initiatives for social change, several of which have become sustainable organizations and nonprofits. We also emphasize Jewish peoplehood, most notably through annual delegations to the Bay Area and Washington DC.

Shalem students are models of academic excellence and drive, who rank among the top five percent of undergraduates in the state, and include five times the national average of commanders, officers, and combat soldiers in elite units. They are secular and religious, come from every socioeconomic background and region of the country, and express the full range of ideologies and worldviews. Many have launched companies, nonprofits, and large-scale initiatives, while others have engaged in sustained volunteer work. Finally, the majority are graduates of one of Israel’s celebrated pre- and post-military leadership academies (mechinot).

Unlike Israel’s other leading institutions of higher education, for which admission is based exclusively on standardized tests and GPAs, Shalem students are admitted on the basis of their grades, their performance on an array of special entry tests, in-depth interviews, and their demonstrated commitment to citizenship and service. Our admissions process is rigorous and personalized, and we are considered among the most selective institutions of higher education in the state.

The National Union of Israeli Students’ Annual Student Satisfaction Survey—the only national ranking of Israel’s 63 institutions of higher education—ranked Shalem number one for four straight years in 14 of the survey’s 18 categories. They include quality of teaching, student-teacher relations, concern for student welfare, and learning environment.

No. Shalem is a private college, and like all other private colleges in Israel, we do not receive any government funding. Unlike other private colleges, however, we are committed to subsidizing our students’ tuition and living expenses, which allows them to devote themselves fully to both their studies and their civic commitments. We are also unique in our determination to keep our class sizes small, which we believe is the key to intellectual development and discovery. For that reason, philanthropy, and not tuition, is the lifeblood of the college.

Shalem College exists to provide exceptional young Israelis with the intellectual and cultural formation they need, as human beings and as citizens, to live worthy and purposeful lives and to advance the flourishing of the State of Israel and Israeli society.

Although Shalem exists to serve the polity, it is not—and cannot be—a partisan or ideological community, institutionally identified as leaning left or right, secular or religious. To fulfill our mission in Israeli society, Shalem must sustain an environment of intellectual freedom and openness to differing viewpoints, and it must therefore remain independent of political fashions, passions, and pressures. We are a community that exists for the limited, yet great, purposes of teaching and learning.

Our community is constituted by a tacit covenant: we gather for the purpose of teaching and learning, seeking knowledge and wisdom about things that matter. At the heart of our education and culture is searching inquiry and open, fearless conversation. We encourage, welcome, and embrace diverse points of view, and we treat all opinions seriously offered with respect. At the same time, we subject all beliefs and opinions to scrutiny and all assumptions to critical examination, seeking always for what is true, good, and worthy. Above all, we do not teach or tell our students what to think. We encourage and prepare them to think for themselves.

Because Shalem is a community devoted to these distinctive purposes, it cannot take an institutional stand on the issues of the day without destroying the conditions for its success. If, for instance, we issue an institutional statement on public policy, we risk censuring or intimidating any minority that does not agree with the view adopted. More important, we contradict our goal of having people think for themselves. As an institution, we will not speak for our students or our alumni, our faculty or our staff.

Although we do not take public positions as an institution, we are proud that our students, faculty, staff, and alumni care deeply about the challenges facing Israeli society. Out of respect for political freedom and civic engagement, we encourage our faculty and students to participate as individuals in political and social activities, provided, of course, that the actions they undertake not interfere with the educational activities of the College or be represented as speaking for Shalem.

Israel, like many democracies today, faces a crucial challenge: how to cultivate leaders who possess the independence of thought and wise judgment and the excellences of character and conduct that the well-being of any society requires. Thanks to their unique education, Shalem’s graduates are emerging equipped and eager to address that challenge. They are in themselves our best hope that this challenge can be met.