PROFESSOR STANISLAV SEGERT, who taught Hebrew Bible and Northwest Semitics for many years at UCLA, has died at the age of 84. Ed Cook, who was one of his doctoral students, has posted an obituary over at Ralph. I studied with Segert as an undergraduate and Master's student in the late '70s and early '80s and Ed and I overlapped. Everything Ed says about him as a man is spot on. I remember Professor Segert's immense erudition, his great humility, and his quiet sense of humor. All his students were in awe of him and had much affection for him. I remember with great gratitute his kindness to me when I was the most callow of undergraduates. His lectures included asides with amusing stories and wry comments, often about his experiences with communism in Czechoslovakia. Once he mentioned that the goverment required him to take Marxism classes for some years and that he had had few illusions about Marxism before them, and none afterwards.

His scholarly record speaks for itself. He was a master of the traditional scholarly disciplines in our field and was also very open to and interested in newer approaches, including structuralism, deconstruction, and advances in epigraphic photography. Like Ed, I have his books on my bookshelf and refer to them regularly.

Requiescat in pace.