TAU Fox Fellow bridges Israeli and American academic worlds at Yale

Meet Attay Kremer, a PhD student in the Department of Philosophy at Tel Aviv University, currently pursuing research into German philosophy—with a focus on Kant—at Yale as a Fox International Fellow. Throughout this academic year, he is taking part in events across the Ivy League campus and joining Fox Fellowship seminars to exchange ideas and experiences with Fellows from around the world.

About the Fox Fellowship

The Fox International Fellowship is a prestigious exchange program between Yale University and 20 partner institutions worldwide, including Tel Aviv University. The program seeks excellent PhD students who are passionate about connecting with renowned faculty and making a global impact for a better world through scholarly exchanges and collaboration. 

The fellowship serves as an academic bond between nations through global-civic discourse, cultivating spaces and conversations for future leaders on a wide-reaching, cross-cultural scale. 

At Tel Aviv University, Kremer has been selected for the Fox International Fellowship on the strength of his research proposal and personal leadership qualities. 

Yale Experiences

During his time at Yale, Kremer has immersed himself in the philosophy department, attending various colloquia that involve discussion sessions and lectures. 

“Part of the benefit of being at Yale is that a lot of speakers come around—that opens you up to new directions.”

He has also been part of a German philosophy reading group that meets weekly. “We’ve been reading Nietzsche,” Kremer shares. “It’s quite a good exercise. It’s also reading it in German, which is nice. Tends to happen less so in Israel than does here.”

Yale campus (photo credit: f11photo on istock)

The fellowship has allowed Kremer to connect with other scholars working on German philosophy and to take advantage of extensive library resources at Yale. He also appreciates the welcoming atmosphere at the department and the university as a whole:

“I get the sense that most of the PhD students are very close knit and they are quite good at welcoming newcomers”

Kremer feels that being at Yale has helped him clarify the audience of his research. “I think it’s quite helpful in adjusting how you position things and how you frame them to know who it is that you’re speaking to, and what this audience looks like and speaks like outside of the publications.”

Overall, Kremer has been able to make great strides while in New Haven. “It’s a very small place with little going on. You can really focus on your research,” he notes. He has been able to attend several conferences and publish some papers.

“I’m nearing the end of my PhD. So it was a very productive decision to come to Yale.”

Studying Philosophy, American Style

One fascinating aspect of Kremer’s experience has been noticing the differences between American and Israeli academic approaches to philosophy: “In the American style, there is a big focus on technical precision, it’s noticeable.”

He elaborates with an example: “When we were reading Nietzsche, one of the people in the group was reading it with a scan of Nietzsche’s original draft in his handwriting. And every now and then he would make a comment about where the new edition of the German that we were reading deviates from the original, where Nietzsche kind of strikes out a word where he maybe chose a different word and then regretted that.”

Highlights and Challenges

A highlight for Attay was presenting at a conference organized by Yale scholars. The experience helped him bond with the community and better understand how they communicate: “When you speak and have to manage the Q&A, it clues you into how that community works.”

When asked about challenges, Attay primarily mentions the inherent difficulties of living abroad: “Unless you’re traveling with your family, you’re going to be 10 months in a foreign country by yourself, and there’s some loneliness involved in that.”

Regarding concerns some might have about being an Israeli scholar on American campuses, Attay notes: “I can say quite safely that at Yale, this is not a real issue.”

“People have been fairly open with me about their political views. And they can be from anywhere on the political spectrum, but it’s not led into personal lines at all.”

Feeling Supported

Yale provides robust support for international students like Attay. The Fox Fellowship offers housing, placing him in an apartment with two other fellows. “The program itself is quite helpful: if we need something around the house that we don’t know how to get, we can contact them and they help us,” he explains.

A meeting of Fox Fellows at Yale

There’s also institutional support through the Office of International Students and Scholars, which is a body of Yale that manages issues to do with international researchers. “A lot of the people here are not Americans, and the university makes a lot of effort to help you be part of something,” says Kremer.

“Yale is very well equipped to welcome international people and more specifically, there’s a very strong Jewish community.”

Advice for Future Applicants

For potential Fox Fellowship applicants, especially those from humanities backgrounds, Attay suggests preparing to balance two different academic personalities.

First, be ready to translate your work for a more social science-oriented audience of Fox fellows: “In the humanities, different things interest you than in the social sciences—there’s a different granularity to the way you talk. Social scientists tend to be more concrete about things, and much less conceptual, much more real world.”

His key advice: “Prepare to translate yourself a little” and focus on making your ideas more accessible to scholars from different disciplines.

“Presenting at the Fox Fellowship seminar is a good opportunity for working on concretizing your ideas.”

Second, engage fully with Yale’s rich humanities environment: “There’s lots to see, lots to hear, and there is a great opportunity to take books from the library.” He also encourages everyone to attend events happening on campus.

“It’s a very rich academic environment, and the humanities are very strong at Yale.”

The Fox International Fellowship is open to Tel Aviv University’s PhD students from the following fields:

• Management
• Law
• Social Science
• Humanities
• Public Health
• Environmental Studies

Read more about the fellowship