From 1996-2004, I was a professor at Handong University in South Korea, where, as director of foreign language education, I myself initiated the teaching of French, Spanish, and German, and I also oversaw the instruction of Japanese and Chinese.  After nearly a decade there, I decided to leave for the new challenge of mastering Arabic while living in the Middle East.

From 2004-2006, I was chairperson of the department of humanities at the American University of Science and Technology in Beirut, Lebanon.  I designed and implemented a Great Books core curriculum for the whole institution, oversaw the instruction of all foreign languages, and was a main liaison with the independent French-language educational section of the school.  I intended to stay there for a decade as well, but was forced to leave abruptly and prematurely when bombs began to fall during the Israeli invasion of July 2006. 

Since that time, I have accorded myself a sabbatical in order to work on writing projects.  If it had not been for the war in Lebanon, I would never have contemplated leaving the tenured security of institutionalized academia.  As it is, however, when I now contemplate seeking a new position, I realize that the kind of special guidance that I can provide to other serious language learners just does not fit well within the structure of any established semester system.  Thus it is that I am now launching this website in an effort to determine whether there exists enough interest in intensive language study for me to be able to establish my own private academy.

Languages
I am unable provide a simple declaration of the number of languages I know.  I have devoted my life to learning as many languages as I can, as well as I can, and in an attempt to share some of the knowledge I have acquired, I am producing a series of videos on the languages of the world, links to which you can find on this site.  In order to answer that seemingly simple question, “How many languages do you know?” I have written an entire book, links to which you can find on this site, with several chapters specifically addressing how to define a language and what it means to know one.  I enjoy studying languages more than I enjoy doing anything else, and I have provided links on this site to a chart on which I systematically document my hours.  One of my major motives for learning languages is to be able to read the texts of Great Books in their original tongues of composition, and I have provided links on this site to samples of me reading such texts aloud.  Should the opportunity arise, I could relocate to almost any European country without facing linguistic challenge; I have lived in Korean and Arabic, I have laid the foundations for doing so in Hindi and Persian, and I am now belatedly doing so in Chinese as well.  If you have the interest and the patience to read through a lengthier and more technical discussion of my skills in specific languages, you can find one here:  Language Learning Forum : Lessons in Polyglottery.

Educational Philosophy
I have taken the comparative and interdisciplinary nature of my own formation very much to heart.  I believe that the Humanities can only be approached in a holistic fashion.  I have never wanted to be anything but a scholar, and by that I do not mean merely an expert in some sub-field of fragmented knowledge, but rather someone who studies all the time so as to build an encyclopedic mind.  I am engaged upon a life-long quest for learning in the sense of continuously challenging myself to expand my horizons.  The study of languages is my passport.