Kennon and I just returned from a grand weekend in London. We stayed at a hotel in Westminster, a short walk from the Thames, the Parliament buildings and Westminster Cathedral. We spent Saturday exploring, starting with a visit to the British Museum. The featured exhibit was a series of colorful, mystical and sensual paintings depicting the lives and loves of India’s Maharajahs. The pilgrimage through a warren of gallery rooms was a journey into ancient times, shrouded in symbolism and mystery. I also visited the [...]

Our professor last week was Amelia Hadfield, a brilliant young scholar and teacher extraordinaire from the University of Kent. She began each of her 12 sessions with a scene-setting lecture, and then put us into teams to discuss, argue and debate. For instance, on the day we examined the Israel-Palestine issue we role-played a summit meeting, with three-person delegations representing Palestine, Israel, the United States, the European Union and Jordan.  I served as moderator for the summit, and another geriatric American was the arbitration judge. [...]

Class Highlights from the Week of July 13 We started the week with a day-long focus on climate change, looking at risks, scenarios for the future, and the roles and responsibilities (personal, government, business) for engaging those scenarios.  The rest of the week was spent in the Middle East, beginning with a seminar on “An Islamic Challenge to the West”. We then got more specific with seminars on “The Gulf: Oil and Islam”, “Iraq An Unnatural State?” and “Iran: A Rogue State?”  The week concluded [...]

Cambridge is a delightful city, spiced by the international flavor of students from across the globe. This summer there are students from 35 nations enrolled in several different graduate-level disciplines in the International Summer School, and high-school age students studying language in the various schools and colleges. The University of Cambridge is made up of 31 colleges and more than 150 departments. Each college is independent, recruiting its own students and faculty, but college faculty members teach in the various departments (physics, languages, etc.) and [...]

It is truly mind-expanding for this 65-year old American man to sit in a class with 23 other students Subscribe & Stay In Touch..FacebookTwitteremailAdd to favoritesDiggStumbleUpon