A Graduate Student in Los Angeles

I returned to Los Angeles from Israel in the summer of 1987, short of money, short of ideas, short of a plan. So I did what any sensible person in that position would do: I went to graduate school.

Having studied psychology in college, I chose to enter a program in Computational Biology, a field to which I was completely unsuited! Much as I had done in Israel some 5 years before when I threw myself into a computer science program that I had little aptitude for I now threw myself into a biology and computer science program. Once again I discovered that I liked the idea of biology and computer science much better than sitting down and working out the logic of it all. That clever experiment lasted about a semester, and was no fun at all.

As my later web design and computer geeking would demonstrate I wasn't entirely wrong about myself in pursuing these studies, but I hadn't yet figured out how to become involved in the kinds of things that I was interested in. Fortunately, and unlike in Israel, this time I recovered fairly quickly from my miscalculation and, recognizing my more literary and verbal tendencies, quickly jumped into an International Relations graduate program. I chose it in part because it provided a way for me to work on and think about my experience of Israeli-Palestinian conflict, something I had lived intensely for a number of years, albeit from a distance, even in Israel. Perhaps my choice of International Relations was also a way of addressing my personal history as the son of a Jew and a non-Jew - the "inter-national" relationship issues that were inside my family and my head. Thus in many ways my graduate student years became a seven year healing process, a seven year process of unwriting and rewriting myself, in the aftermath of my experiment with neo-traditional Jewish life in Israel. In the process I read widely in politics, power and the social scientific literature of human violence. I came, in the aftermath of my religious Israeli experiment, to articulate how I valued the United States, the ideal of multiculturalism, liberal society, and acceptance of difference. I discovered I was an American, a pluralist, a liberal, a democrat. I gradually, painfully and slowly surrendered many, but not all, of the practices of religious Judaism. In the end a practice without a community cannot survive, and I had little or no community, and my crypto-Judaic practices were completely (and appropriately) without resonance or support in an academic environment. Furthermore, my own idea of Jewish life was so idiosyncratic that it brought me into connection with almost no one.

I emerged from graduate school in 1994 with a Ph.D. in International Relations, and a pretty good dissertation on Genocide. All this was well and good but I also emerged with little interest in international affairs, the Department of State, the academic teaching of international relations, or any of the things that such a degree might prepare one for professionally. In fact, in the last year or two of dissertation writing (1993-1994) I realized that - oops! - I was going to get the completely wrong Ph.D.

Damn! I hate it when that happens.

Perhaps my dissatisfaction with my field came about because the personal concerns associated with my decision to study International Relations had been resolved. I was further from the conflict in Israel, further from my own internal conflicts over Jewish identity. Certainly the weight of meditating on genocide daily was oppressive. I couldn't quite reconcile myself to the thought of teaching "Introduction to Genocidal Maniacs" to undergraduates for the next 10 years. And certainly the career opportunities in International Relations (academia or government) were not attractive to me. If I had once thought the diplomatic corps might be attractive, I was well over that idea by 1993. The study of power attracted me, but the practice of power politics (in academia, government or business) held no attraction at all.

Fortunately, this is America, and with a little post-doctoral work you can retool the wrong PhD into the right career. Because my work on genocide had led me to understand genocide in a broader conceptual framework which was related to public and population health, I began to explore a career in public health, and began a post-doctoral masters degree in health services research. As luck and life would have it this was yet another miscalculation.... not entirely the wrong direction, but not in a direction sure to produce satisfaction. You see, I really didn't get what public health was about. I was a theory builder, interested in theoretical issues in human disease and mortality and the politics that surround responses to these issues. Public health, and the related field of "health services research" are much more practical and problem oriented, far removed from the abstractions that I was professionally qualified to pontificate upon. However, in the paradox of life, I was probably able to abandon my career in public health faster than I would have been able to realize my unsuitedness to political science and academia, and so, while public health and health services research were not exactly right, their wrongness was not without its value, enabling me to escape the academy a little faster than I otherwise might have.

As this chapter drew to a close, in the last months of 1993 I believe, I would meet my future wife Leora Troper. As the Jewish saying goes, he who finds a wife also finds blessing. My doctoral dissertation behind me, my career in health services research opening before me, my depression somewhat fading (I was still a graduate student... but I was almost done) I was in an upbeat state of mind, and sufficiently presentable to persuade Leora to hang out with me. Things were looking up.