We made our final trek to the top of Mt. Carmel and Haifa University this morning for a few more meetings with faculty and students. Our first session featured three faculty members offering their various perspectives on the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict. Professor Un Bar-Joseph provided an intriguing presentation on the psychology of security in Israel. His research and theories really helped me understand the Israeli perspective on threats, the need to use fo...

It's been a 15-hour day for me, so this entry will be brief! I went ahead of our group this morning to meet with a librarian, Cecilia, at Haifa University. She gave me a tour of the building and we exchanged comparisons and similarities between our library programs. Haifa's library uses the Ex Libris library system, just as we do at Richmond. They are also involved in digitizing several historical collections in northern Israel. We had two lectures this morn...

We spent our afternoon and early evening in Akko, a small city north of Haifa near the Lebanon border. The old city of Akko is a UNESCO World Heritage Site and our favorite Haifa tour guide, Eran, led us through the fascinating history of the city. We toured the "underground" Crusader city and then discovered how the Ottomans built over it centuries later. Akko is also predominately an Arab city in Israel and that was interesting to absorb and observe. For ex...

Our day started with more beautiful views of Haifa and the surrounding area from the university's mountain-top campus. (See my blog photo for the day.) To the north is Akko and the Lebanon border and to the south is Tel Aviv. Dr. Udi Eran, professor of political science, provided a morning lecture on the history of the Israel-Palestine conflict. His framework of this multi-layered, complicated conflict was superb. Lunchtime was devoted to individual meetings...

We left Amman at 6 a.m. this morning to cross the border into Israel. Representatives from Haifa University were there to meet us around 8:45 a.m. Crossing the border was very involved, with several security checkpoints, change of vehicles, checking of passports, lengthy questioning, etc. As one would imagine, security is of utmost importance in this region. Our hotel in Amman had security gates and bag x-ray equipment at the entrance and all males were frisk...