Hunting For William Holman Hunt: Part 1--The Bench

I have always wanted to check out the Mar Elias Monastery since I often pass it on my way to Gush Etzion. In looking it up, I was amazed to read that in 1910 William Holman Hunt's widow, Edith, commissioned a stone bench, which still stands today, just outside the monastery.

A few months ago, my friends Becky and Prezzy, and i rode out to the monastery to check out the bench. Sadly, some toolbag vandalised the bench with spray paint, and there appear to be inscriptions on the bench, but the weather has mostly worn them away.

So why put the bench here? Apparently WHH loved the light out here, and apparently worked on 'The Light of the World' as well as 'The Scapegoat' from this very spot. Hunt took several trips to Palestine, and his daughter was even born in Jerusalem. Here's a pretty useless video i took of the bench...at night. In a previous post, i provided a bit more detail about WHH in Palestine. For more on WHH, click here.

The drama continues with Part 2: The House. Stay tuned...

British and American universities 'should merge to beat competition' - Times Online

On a previous post, i expressed concern about the academy and what on earth young nerdlings would do with their graduate degrees. Today, i saw this article:

British and American universities 'should merge to beat competition' - Times Online

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I remember Rick Trainor from King's College--i think he's American, like many other professors at King's, which makes the partnership easy to understand. From what i can recall, there seemed to be a very strong connection between the English departments of King's and Penn. Nice.

Two things made me flinch. This:

Universities are springing up in China, Korea, India and the Middle East, posing a potential threat to the supremacy of western institutions.

It's a pretty arrogant statement. Not only are Western institutions superior, but the 'threat' of other institutions is thinkable, slightly frightening, but still only pose 'a potential threat.'

The second thing that makes me a bit nervous is the behaviour of English universities to Israeli academics. This year was the first time  American academics have boycotted Israel, though it remains to a far lesser degree than in the UK. I wonder what this alliance will bring.