About Myself
With UCLA’s Bruin Statue on New Year’s Day, 2007
I was born an raised on Long Island, New York and graduated from Westhampton Beach High School. After a four year stint in the U.S. Army, I moved to Los Angeles, California. I studied at UCLA where I received a bachelor’s degree in Near Eastern Studies followed by master’s and doctoral degrees in Near Eastern Languages and Cultures. My dissertation was a study of proverbial and idiomatic language in the context of a modern Persian novel.
My interests and activities include languages (I have some proficiency in Persian, Arabic, and French), computers, politics (I might be described as a libertarian with a lowercase “l”), weightlifting, and poetry.
