My sabbatical at Berkeley Law is about to come to an end.
It is difficult to summarize such months in just a few lines. They included research and writing, conferences and lectures, professional meetings, long conversations in hallways, libraries, cafés, and among campus buildings too beautiful to remain merely a backdrop.
But in the end, as often happens, it is not only the ideas that remain.
It is the people.
Scholars, students, colleagues, and new friends — people who reminded me that serious academic thought does not have to be born in solitude. Sometimes it emerges through conversation, through listening, through generous disagreement, and through encounters between languages, worlds, memories, and dreams.
I came to Berkeley to think, write, and advance my research. I leave with sharpened ideas, new questions, pages written, and horizons opened in directions I had not expected.
Above all, I leave with deep gratitude for the people I met, and for connections that I know will not end here.
There are places you visit. And there are places that stay with you.
For me, Berkeley already belongs to the second kind.
