l x x v i i i I N T R O D U C T I O N T O V O L U M E 1 5 selected by the Americans. The new members were European and American schol- ars and financial backers from the United States.[48] Weizmann, who was not present at the Munich meeting, deemed some of the new members incompetent. He was also unhappy with the new, British university titles conferred on Magnes and Bentwich, unsuitable, to his mind, for the adminis- tration of the university (Abs. 124).[49] Einstein concurred and wrote to Weizmann that he would “never forget what an embarrassing impression” Magnes’s bestow- ing the title of chancellor upon himself had made on him. Magnes needed to be told that he was the executive organ of the board. He confirmed the accuracy of the min- utes of the meeting and objected to their being presented to Magnes prior to their distribution to the other members of the board. Einstein warned that should Magnes continue to behave in this manner, he would have to be removed, regardless of whether he had backing from the American funders of the university (Doc. 117). Thus, the opening shot was fired in what would evolve into a major conflict be- tween Einstein and Magnes over the minutes of the Munich meeting.[50] In late December 1925, Einstein, as president of the board, protested to Magnes against his sending out a second version of the minutes. He was disturbed by Magnes’s alternative version, whose revisions mainly dealt with the principal res- olutions adopted by the board, and urged Magnes to withdraw the “invalid min- utes” (Doc. 142). The version of the minutes sanctioned by Einstein was prepared by Leo Kohn, chairman of the Zionist Organisation’s university committee in Lon- don (see Illustration 7). The second version was produced by Magnes himself. The most significant differences related to the location of the central office of the pre- siding committee, the definition of the role of the presiding committee, the charac- ter and authority of the proposed academic council, the identity of the secretary of the board, and the university’s budget.[51] The tug-of-war over the minutes boiled down to two decisive interrelated questions. First, did the main locus of control over the governance of the university lie with the Zionist Organisation in London and the diaspora intellectuals on the board of governors, or with the local executive of the university in Jerusalem? Second, were the decisions taken by the board in Munich binding, or were they merely proposals that needed to be approved by the executive in Jerusalem? Einstein informed Felix M. Warburg, the university’s most influential American backer, of the outcome of the Munich meeting. He stated that “nothing would be more disastrous than to transfer the top-level governance of the university to Pal- estine,” which lacked scholars with “the essential experience and intellectual cali- ber to build up and govern a university worthy of the entirety of diaspora Jewry.”