Reflections of My Time at Hebrew University
By Ron Levi, Toronto
I came to Hebrew U as a Lady Davis Fellow in 1999 while pursuing my doctoral degree at the University of Toronto. My academic host was the Institute of Criminology which is in the Faculty of Law at Hebrew U. Three years earlier, I spent time in Jerusalem as a comparative law clerk for the Israeli Supreme Court – and I soon found myself drawn to the Lady Davis Fellowships as an opportunity to work with top-flight researchers at Hebrew U and to expand my thinking while writing my dissertation. My spouse was also selected as a Lady Davis Fellow that same year and our time there gave us the context, colleagues and intellectual conversations so necessary for academic work, that we still think about to this day!
I could not have predicted, though, that the insights, mentoring and academic conversations – and, frankly, the friendships I built with colleagues during this time – would persist until today. I am now a faculty member at the University of Toronto and am in regular contact with several colleagues from Hebrew U who I met during my time in Jerusalem. They have become friends and colleagues on research projects, we visit and present papers through Hebrew U-University of Toronto opportunities, and we continue to exchange papers, research insights, dinners and coffees. And this is now intergenerational: on a recent family trip to Israel, we took our two kids to visit Hebrew U (and took fun photos by the Albert Einstein banners!).
- Ron is the Director, Global Strategy, Munk School of Global Affairs; Associate Professor, Global Affairs and Sociology, University of Toronto