Organizers of a Ben-Gurion University of the Negev-Brown University intensive summer course knew that one of the eight students coming to Beersheva for two weeks from the school in Providence, R.I., had ties to Israel.
But it wasn’t until Remy Meir pronounced her name for them that they learned she was the great-granddaughter of former Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir.
A doctoral candidate at Brown who researches pain and addiction, Meir and the other students were part of the course “NeuroTechnology: From Research to Application.” When organizers learned her family history, they made arrangements for Meir and several fellow Brown students to visit the Ben-Gurion Archive at the university.
And so, a “meeting” of the spirit of two former Israeli prime ministers transpired.
Oren Shriki, head of BGU’s cognitive and brain sciences department, and Christopher Moore, associate director of Brown’s Carney Institute for Brain Science, co-taught the course. BGU’s Gordon Cohen NeuroHub and the Carney Institute were partners of, and Americans for Ben-Gurion University supported the program.
Founded in the 1970s as part of the Ben-Gurion Heritage Institute to commemorate the legacy of Israeli founding father and first prime minister David Ben-Gurion, the archive is located in Sde Boker in Israel’s south. It is near the retirement home of Ben-Gurion and his wife, Paula.
Meir’s visit to the archive came just a few weeks before the release in late August of the feature film, “Golda,” in which Helen Mirren plays Meir’s great-grandmother.
