Her tenure was tainted by ubiquitous and lengthy strikes by Teacher's unions in elementary, middle and high schools, and at universities and colleges.

Tamir also served as acting Science, Culture and Sport minister following Ophir Pines-Paz's resignation in November 2006 until March 2007 when Raleb Majadele was appointed.

However, she resigned her seat in 2010 to become President of Shenkar College of Engineering and Design, and was replaced by Majadele.

This led the opposition leaders to demand her dismissal, while Member of Knesset Ronit Tirosh (Kadima), a former director general of the Education Ministry, said the "wretched" decision "is not justified from a pedagogic standpoint and is not a matter for political intervention."

"[2] On 11 August 2008, it was reported that Tamir had announced plans to remove Ze'ev Jabotinsky's work from the national education curriculum, causing a furor among rightists.

In her new book "Why Nationalism" Tamir continues this line of thought and claims that national sentiments lie as the core of the modern nation-state and that their erosion, due to the development of hyper-globalism, is responsible for the rapid growth of social and economic gaps.