A delegation of 20 Israeli scholars from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and the University of Tel Aviv are among the 1,200 experts from 20 nations gathered at the University of Michigan for the 27th International Congress of Orientalists.
Prof. Uriel Heyd, head of the Department of Near Eastern Studies of the Hebrew University and Prof. Schmuel Yavin, head of the Department of Archaeology of the University of Tel Aviv, lead the delegations from their respective institutions of learning.
The Israeli scholars will join their colleagues in discussing various aspects of ancient and modern Asia at the week-long sessions at which some 500 papers will be delivered. Prof. W. Norman Brown, president of the congress, expressed his regret that the Russians, Czechoslovak, Bulgarian and East German scholars, who had been invited to attend, had decided to withdraw “at the next-to-last moment.” The war in Vietnam and tensions in the Middle East were given by Moscow as the reasons for considering that the time was inopportune for an east-west scholarly exchange.
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