"Interviewer: What were your early days at Princeton like?
—Hitti: They were not without dissatisfaction. I was a full professor at AUB, but I came here as assistant professor of Semitic literature. And we started—my dear sir, you won't believe me—we started in the tower of the old library building. They gave me a desk and a chair in the stacks. Pages and readers were coming and going, picking up books, and I would be holding my classes. My work seemed very peripheral."
PS Hitti had a fallout with Princeton in his last years (anyone knows more about this matter?) and he removed his book collection from Princeton to the University of Minnesota, where they are now.
