Kerry Hull was a Professor in Religious Education at Brigham Young University when this was written. He earned a BA in Spanish and BA in French from Utah State University. He received an MS in applied linguistics from Georgetown University in 1993. He completed a PhD in linguistic anthropology at the University of Texas at Austin in 2003. His academic interests include Maya linguistics and anthropology, Polynesian linguistics, historical linguistics, sociolinguistics, and Maya epigraphic studies. He has conducted linguistic, ethnographic, and archaeological fieldwork in Mexico, Belize, Guatemala, and Honduras. He has also carried out linguistic fieldwork on the Ua Pou dialect of Northern Marquesan and on the dialect used on the island of Raivavae in the Austral chain in French Polynesia.
Professor Hull’s time at the Jerusalem Center was unusual. With his wife Asa, Kerry flew to Jerusalem in August 2024 in the midst of the ongoing Israel-Hamas war. They returned that August with other faculty in hopes that a peace would come in time for the Winter 2025 semester students to have a program. When the war continued, the students did not return for Winter. So, they spent their time traveling the Holy Land and visiting sites as they continued to learn and prepare. As a more peaceful time came that winter, it was announced that students would return in May 2025. Before the students came, three groups of Jerusalem Center Alumni came to the Center for two week tours. Kerry served as a guide for these alumni.
The Spring/Summer student semester proved to be different than any other. While the semester started off as others, on June 13th 2025 the 12 day war between Israel and Iran broke out. Fortunately, the Hulls, the faculty, and the students had already arrived in Greece for their out of country field trip. The time in Greece was extended and the program was then moved to Turkey for an unexpected additional study program. The war ended and things calmed enough that the program returned to Jerusalem for the final month of the program.