The Royal Academy at Turku was entirely Finnish in character. All of its professors were from Sweden or Finland which was part of the Swedish Empire at the time. And only a few of the students came from abroad and even their stay was typically brief. But one group of teachers stood out in representing the universities’ characteristic internationalism–the lesser known tutors.

It was a sticky day in late May 2000 and I was waiting for the Faculty of Theology’s (doctoral) Congregation ceremony. Three years earlier I had defended my thesis on Finns’ studies abroad before the establishment of the Academy at Turku in 1640, and my study had been rated in the highest class. As such, I was the so-called primus doctor leading the procession and it was my ceremonial duty to answer the following question concerning my excellence: “Did the establishment of the Royal Academy in 1640 raise academic standards in Finland?” It was a question that required a reasoned argument but in the end it came down to a simple yes or no. Without a doubt the audience was expecting me to expatiate on the University’s huge significance for seventeenth-century social improvement and of course an answer in the affirmative.

My first encounter with the Middle East was in the early autumn of 1974, when I began my studies at the University of Haifa. I had no great ambitions for my studies. Life in the Middle East was, on the other hand, all too real with the sound of sporadic grenades exploding in the direction of Lebanon and the Golan Heights and Israeli Skyhawk and Phantom fighter planes flitting above the surface of the Mediterranean. We followed all this from the terrace of the University cafeteria.