Although I went to college in the United States - Carleton in Northfield, Minnesota - I returned to the Middle East for a year in 1970-71 to study at the American University of Beirut.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
Two years later, I went to the University of Minnesota from which I was on leave for several years during the war as a member of Statistical Research Group at Columbia University.
I went to the Westminster College for Men in Missouri, which is what it was called back then, and transferred to the University of Denver where I ultimately got my degree.
For my undergraduate work, I went to Oklahoma State University and graduated from there in 1977.
My academic specialization is Arab-Israel relations.
I left Princeton, but I graduated Harvard, in 1952.
During my youth, the idea of moving from Lebanon was unthinkable. Then I began to realise I might have to go, like my grandfather, uncles and others who left for America, Egypt, Australia, Cuba.
When the Lebanese Civil War started in 1975, I was 15. I was shipped to boarding school in England and, after that, to UCLA.
I finally returned to Iran in 1979, when I got my degree in English and American literature, and stayed for 18 years in the Islamic republic.
I grew up in Jerusalem and went to school here. I studied at the Hebrew University - mostly Islam and Arabic: Arab literature, Arab poetry and culture, because I felt like we are living in this region, in the Middle East, and we are not alone: There are nations here whose culture is Arab.
After the war, I returned to Minnesota, from which I soon moved to Brown University, and a year later, to Columbia University where I remained from 1947 until 1958.