Legal Advisor to Israel's Higher Education Council to Step Down After Critical Audit Report

Yael Tor-Kaspa, the legal advisor to Israel's Council for Higher Education (CHE), will conclude her role following a severe internal audit report against her performance. The decision came as part of a confidential mediation agreement reached after Tor-Kaspa filed a petition with the Labor Court to prevent her dismissal. Tor-Kaspa served as the CHE's legal advisor for over 20 years.

The audit, commissioned by a committee led by Roee Folkman and conducted by internal auditor Iris Shterk, spanned more than 200 pages and identified significant deficiencies in Tor-Kaspa's work. Among the findings were that her legal opinions were often delivered orally and not authored by her but by external lawyers at an annual cost exceeding one million shekels. The report questioned whether Tor-Kaspa even reviewed these external opinions and described her as an unsupervised gatekeeper acting contrary to administrative law principles.

The audit also revealed a lack of oversight over her work and noted her claim that her discretion was absolute. Additionally, the report stated that Tor-Kaspa obstructed senior academics from appealing her decisions to the government's legal advisor, Gali Baharav-Miara. This was the first time a state authority conducted such a critical audit of its legal counsel.

Tor-Kaspa rejected the criticism, asserting that the report was commissioned and tailored against her due to her professional stances and strict adherence to administrative law, which she said disturbed vested interests. Following the report, the CHE initiated dismissal proceedings, which led to the recent mediation agreement to resolve the dispute quietly.

The CHE expressed gratitude to Tor-Kaspa for her long service, noting her leadership in establishing and managing the council's legal framework and her role on its management team.