Rashid Khalidi
Encyclopedia
Rashid Ismail Khalidi born 1948, a Palestinian-American historian
of the Middle East
, is the Edward Said
Professor of Modern Arab Studies at Columbia University
, and director of the Middle East Institute of Columbia's School of International and Public Affairs.
. Khalidi is the son of Ismail Khalidi
and the nephew of Husayin al-Khalidi
. He is the father of the playwright, Ismail Khalidi
. He grew up in New York City where his father, a Saudi citizen of Palestinian
origins who was born in Jerusalem, worked for the United Nations
. Khalidi's mother, a Lebanese-American born in the United States, was an interior decorator. Khalidi attended the United Nations International School
.
In 1970, Khalidi received a B.A. from Yale University
, where he was a member of the Wolf's Head Society
. He then received a D. Phil. from Oxford University in 1974. Between 1976 and 1983, Khalidi “was teaching full time as an Assistant Professor in the Political Studies and Public Administration Dept. at the American University of Beirut
, published two books and several articles, and also was a research fellow at the independent Institute for Palestine Studies
." He has also taught at the Lebanese University
.
Khalidi became politically active in Beirut
, where he resided through the 1982 Lebanon War
. "I was deeply involved in politics in Beirut" in the 1970s, he said in an interview. Khalidi was cited in the media during this period, sometimes as an official with the Palestinian News Service, Wafa
, or directly with the Palestinian Liberation Organization. However, Khalidi has denied that he was a PLO spokesman, stating that he "often spoke to journalists in Beirut, who usually cited me without attribution as a well-informed Palestinian source. If some misidentified me at the time, I am not aware of it." Subsequently sources disagreed as to the nature or existence of Khalidi's official relationship with the organization.
Returning to America, Khalidi spent two years teaching at Columbia University
before joining the faculty of the University of Chicago
in 1987, where he spent eight years as a professor and director of both the Center for Middle Eastern Studies
and the Center for International Studies at the University of Chicago. During the Gulf War
, while teaching at Chicago, Khalidi "emerged "as one of the most influential commentators from within Middle Eastern Studies." In 2003 he joined the faculty of Columbia University, where he currently serves as the Edward Said
Professor of Modern Arab Studies. He has also taught at Georgetown University
.
Khalidi is married to Mona Khalidi
, who is the Assistant Dean of Student Affairs and the Assistant Director of Graduate Studies of the School of International and Public Affairs at Columbia University.
He is a member of the National Advisory Committee of the U.S. Interreligious Committee for Peace in the Middle East, which describes itself as "a national organization of Jews, Christians and Muslims dedicated to dialogue, education and advocacy for peace based on the deepest teachings of the three religious traditions."
He is member of the Board of Sponsors of The Palestine–Israel Journal, a publication founded by Ziad AbuZayyad and Victor Cygielman, prominent Palestinian and Israeli journalists. He is founding trustee of The Center for Palestine Research and Studies. He is also a member of the Council on Foreign Relations
.
In October 2010, Khalidi delivered the annual Edward Said memorial lecture at the Palestine Center
in Washington.
the modern Middle East
. He focuses on the countries of the southern and eastern Mediterranean
, with an eye to the emergence of various national identities and the role played by external powers in their development. He also researches the impact of the press on forming new senses of community, the role of education in the construction of political identity, and in the way narratives have developed over the past centuries in the region. Michael C. Hudson, director of the Center for Contemporary Arab Studies
at Georgetown, describes Khalidi as "preeminent in his field." He served as President of the Middle East Studies Association of North America
in 1994 and is currently the editor of the Journal of Palestine Studies
.
Much of Khalidi's scholarly work in the 1990s focused on the historical construction of nationalism in the Arab world. Drawing on the work of theorist Benedict Anderson
who described nations as "imagined communities
", he does not posit primordial national identities, but argues that these nations have legitimacy and rights. In Palestinian Identity: The Construction of Modern National Consciousness (1997), he places the emergence of Palestinian national identity in the context of Ottoman
and British colonialism as well as the early Zionist effort
in the Levant
. Palestinian Identity won the Middle East Studies Association
’s top honor, the Albert Hourani Prize as best book of 1997.
His dating of the emergence of Palestinian nationalism to the early 20th century and his tracing of its contours provide a rejoinder to Israeli nationalist claims that Palestinians had no collective claims prior to the 1948 creation of Israel. His signature work, Palestinian Identity: The Construction of Modern National Consciousness (Columbia University Press, 1997), argues that Arabs living in Palestine began to regard themselves as a distinct people decades before 1948, "and that the struggle against Zionism does not by itself sufficiently explain Palestinian nationalism."
In it, Khalidi also describes the late development, failings and internal divisions within the various elements of the Palestinian nationalist movement.
In Resurrecting Empire: Western Footprints and America's Perilous Path in the Middle East (2004), Khalidi takes readers on a historical tour of Western involvement in the Middle East, and argues that these interactions continue to have a colonialist
nature that is both morally unacceptable and likely to backfire. Khalidi's most recent book, Sowing Crisis, places the United States
approach to the Middle East in historical context. He is sharply critical of U.S. policies during the Cold War
, writing that Cold War policies "formulated to oppose the Soviets, consistently undermined democracy and exacerbated tensions in the Middle East."
Khalidi has written, "It may seem hard to believe today, but for decades the United States was in fact a major patron, indeed in some respects the major patron, of earlier incarnations" of radical, militant Islam, in order to use all possible resources in waging the Cold War
. He adds, "The Cold War was over, but its tragic sequels, its toxic debris, and its unexploded mines continued to cause great harm, in ways largely unrecognized in American discourse."
Historian and Israeli Ambassador to the United States Michael Oren
acknowledges that "Khalidi is mainstream" because "the stream itself has changed. The criteria for scholarship have become very political."
in the early Mandatory period. As Khalidi writes, "Local patriotism could not yet be described as nation-state nationalism."
Khalidi also documents active opposition by the Arab press to Zionism
in the 1880s.
, Talk of the Nation
, Morning Edition
, Worldview
, The News Hour with Jim Lehrer, Charlie Rose
, and Nightline, and has appeared on the BBC
, the CBC
, France Inter
and the Voice of America
. He served as president of the American Committee on Jerusalem, now known as the American Task Force on Palestine
.
of the world's oldest and most secure Jewish communities, which had found in the Arab lands a tolerance that, albeit imperfect, was nonexistent in the often genocidal, Jew-hating Christian West." Regarding the proposed two-state solution
to the Israel-Palestinian conflict, Khalidi has written that "the now universally applauded two-state solution faces the juggernaut of Israel's actions in the occupied territories over more than forty years, actions that have been expressly designed to make its realization in any meaningful form impossible." However, Khalidi also noted that "there are also flaws in the alternatives, grouped under the rubric of the one-state solution".
Regarding American support for Israel, Khalidi stated in an interview that "every other single place on the face of the earth is in support of the Palestinians, yet all of them together aren't a hill of beans compared to the United States and Israel, because the United States and Israel can basically do anything they please. They are the world superpower, they are the regional superpower."
A New York Sun
editorial criticized Khalidi for stating that there is a legal right under international law for Palestinians to resist Israeli occupation. For example, in a speech given to the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee
, Khalidi said that “[k]illing civilians is a war crime. It’s a violation of international law. They are not soldiers. They’re civilians, they’re unarmed. The ones who are armed, the ones who are soldiers, the ones who are in occupation, that's different. That's resistance.” The Sun editorial argued that by failing to distinguish between Palestinian combatants and noncombatants, Khalidi implies that all Palestinians have this right to resist, which it claimed was incorrect under international law. In an interview discussing this editorial, Khalidi objected to this characterization as incorrect and taken out of the context of his statements on international law.
Khalidi has described discussions of Arab restitution for property confiscated from the Jewish refugees
from Middle Eastern and North African countries after the creation of Israel]] as “insidious”, "because the advocates of Jewish refugees are not working to get those legitimate assets back but are in fact trying to cancel out the debt of Israel toward Palestinian refugees."
Khalidi opposes the Iraq War and has said that “we owe reparations to the Iraqi people.”
spoke out on Khalidi's behalf, writing: "The department's decision to dismiss Professor Khalidi from the program was wrong and violates First Amendment principles... The decision was based solely on his purported political views and was made without any consultation and apparently without any review of the facts."
of an article about Obama's attendance at a 2003 farewell dinner for Khalidi, their relationship became an issue in the campaign. Some opponents of Barack Obama
claimed that the relationship between Obama and Khalidi was evidence that Obama would not maintain a pro-Israel foreign policy if elected. When asked, Obama called his own commitment to Israel "unshakeable" and he does not consult with Khalidi on foreign policy. Opponents of Republican candidate John McCain
pointed out that he had served as chairman of the International Republican Institute
(IRI) during the 1990s which provided grants worth $500,000 to the Center for Palestine Research and Studies, which was co-founded by Khalidi, for the purpose of polling the views of the Palestinian people.
Efraim Karsh
said about the same book "One would have hoped that after 80 years of stubborn adherence to the 'one-state solution' and an equally adamant rejection of the 'two-state solution,' which have resulted in Palestinian statelessness, all but the most fanatically self-deluded would grasp the root causes of the Palestinian debacle — not least a historian purporting to redress the 'continuing refusal to look honestly at what has happened in this small land over the past century or so.'"
Historian
A historian is a person who studies and writes about the past and is regarded as an authority on it. Historians are concerned with the continuous, methodical narrative and research of past events as relating to the human race; as well as the study of all history in time. If the individual is...
of the Middle East
Middle East
The Middle East is a region that encompasses Western Asia and Northern Africa. It is often used as a synonym for Near East, in opposition to Far East...
, is the Edward Said
Edward Said
Edward Wadie Saïd was a Palestinian-American literary theorist and advocate for Palestinian rights. He was University Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University and a founding figure in postcolonialism...
Professor of Modern Arab Studies at Columbia University
Columbia University
Columbia University in the City of New York is a private, Ivy League university in Manhattan, New York City. Columbia is the oldest institution of higher learning in the state of New York, the fifth oldest in the United States, and one of the country's nine Colonial Colleges founded before the...
, and director of the Middle East Institute of Columbia's School of International and Public Affairs.
Family, education and career
Khalidi was born in New YorkNew York
New York is a state in the Northeastern region of the United States. It is the nation's third most populous state. New York is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south, and by Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont to the east...
. Khalidi is the son of Ismail Khalidi
Ismail Khalidi
Ismail Ragib Khalidi was a senior political affairs officer for the United Nations Department of Political Affairs.Khalidi was born in Jerusalem, Palestine, on November 13, 1916. He was the brother of Husayin al-Khalidi, father of Rashid Khalidi and the grandfather of the American playwright,...
and the nephew of Husayin al-Khalidi
Husayin al-Khalidi
Husayn Fakhri al-Khalidi was born in Jerusalem. He worked as medical doctor for the Department of Public Health in Aleppo. Khalidi was elected mayor of Jerusalem from 1934-1937...
. He is the father of the playwright, Ismail Khalidi
Ismail Khalidi (writer)
Ismail Khalidi is a Palestinian American playwright, poet, and actor, best known for the plays Tennis in Nablus and Truth Serum Blues...
. He grew up in New York City where his father, a Saudi citizen of Palestinian
Palestinian people
The Palestinian people, also referred to as Palestinians or Palestinian Arabs , are an Arabic-speaking people with origins in Palestine. Despite various wars and exoduses, roughly one third of the world's Palestinian population continues to reside in the area encompassing the West Bank, the Gaza...
origins who was born in Jerusalem, worked for the United Nations
United Nations
The United Nations is an international organization whose stated aims are facilitating cooperation in international law, international security, economic development, social progress, human rights, and achievement of world peace...
. Khalidi's mother, a Lebanese-American born in the United States, was an interior decorator. Khalidi attended the United Nations International School
United Nations International School
The United Nations International School is a private international school in New York City. It was founded in 1947 by families who worked for or were associated with the United Nations. The school was founded to provide an international education, while preserving its students' diverse cultural...
.
In 1970, Khalidi received a B.A. from Yale University
Yale University
Yale University is a private, Ivy League university located in New Haven, Connecticut, United States. Founded in 1701 in the Colony of Connecticut, the university is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States...
, where he was a member of the Wolf's Head Society
Wolf's Head (secret society)
Wolf's Head Society is an undergraduate senior or secret society at Yale University, New Haven, CT, USA. Membership is recomposed annually of fifteen or sixteen Yale University students, typically juniors from the college...
. He then received a D. Phil. from Oxford University in 1974. Between 1976 and 1983, Khalidi “was teaching full time as an Assistant Professor in the Political Studies and Public Administration Dept. at the American University of Beirut
American University of Beirut
The American University of Beirut is a private, independent university in Beirut, Lebanon. It was founded as the Syrian Protestant College by American missionaries in 1866...
, published two books and several articles, and also was a research fellow at the independent Institute for Palestine Studies
Institute for Palestine Studies
The Institute for Palestine Studies is the oldest independent non-profit, public service, research institute in the Arab world, was established and incorporated in Beirut, Lebanon, in 1963 and has since served as a model for other such institutes in the region...
." He has also taught at the Lebanese University
Lebanese University
The Lebanese University is the only public institution for higher learning in Lebanon. Founded in 1951, it has 17 faculties as of 2006 and serves various cultural, religious, and social groups of students and teachers....
.
Khalidi became politically active in Beirut
Beirut
Beirut is the capital and largest city of Lebanon, with a population ranging from 1 million to more than 2 million . Located on a peninsula at the midpoint of Lebanon's Mediterranean coastline, it serves as the country's largest and main seaport, and also forms the Beirut Metropolitan...
, where he resided through the 1982 Lebanon War
1982 Lebanon War
The 1982 Lebanon War , , called Operation Peace for Galilee by Israel, and later known in Israel as the Lebanon War and First Lebanon War, began on 6 June 1982, when the Israel Defense Forces invaded southern Lebanon...
. "I was deeply involved in politics in Beirut" in the 1970s, he said in an interview. Khalidi was cited in the media during this period, sometimes as an official with the Palestinian News Service, Wafa
Wafa
'Wafa' , also known as the Palestine News Agency, is the news agency of the Palestinian National Authority, and was "the P.L.O.'s news agency" in the years before the formation of the P.A....
, or directly with the Palestinian Liberation Organization. However, Khalidi has denied that he was a PLO spokesman, stating that he "often spoke to journalists in Beirut, who usually cited me without attribution as a well-informed Palestinian source. If some misidentified me at the time, I am not aware of it." Subsequently sources disagreed as to the nature or existence of Khalidi's official relationship with the organization.
Returning to America, Khalidi spent two years teaching at Columbia University
Columbia University
Columbia University in the City of New York is a private, Ivy League university in Manhattan, New York City. Columbia is the oldest institution of higher learning in the state of New York, the fifth oldest in the United States, and one of the country's nine Colonial Colleges founded before the...
before joining the faculty of the University of Chicago
University of Chicago
The University of Chicago is a private research university in Chicago, Illinois, USA. It was founded by the American Baptist Education Society with a donation from oil magnate and philanthropist John D. Rockefeller and incorporated in 1890...
in 1987, where he spent eight years as a professor and director of both the Center for Middle Eastern Studies
Center for Middle Eastern Studies at the University of Chicago
The Center for Middle Eastern Studies at the University of Chicago is a National Resource Center for the study of a region extending from Morocco in the West to Kazakhstan in the East. As a result, this Area Center covers some of the most important and controversial regions - including North...
and the Center for International Studies at the University of Chicago. During the Gulf War
Gulf War
The Persian Gulf War , commonly referred to as simply the Gulf War, was a war waged by a U.N.-authorized coalition force from 34 nations led by the United States, against Iraq in response to Iraq's invasion and annexation of Kuwait.The war is also known under other names, such as the First Gulf...
, while teaching at Chicago, Khalidi "emerged "as one of the most influential commentators from within Middle Eastern Studies." In 2003 he joined the faculty of Columbia University, where he currently serves as the Edward Said
Edward Said
Edward Wadie Saïd was a Palestinian-American literary theorist and advocate for Palestinian rights. He was University Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University and a founding figure in postcolonialism...
Professor of Modern Arab Studies. He has also taught at Georgetown University
Georgetown University
Georgetown University is a private, Jesuit, research university whose main campus is in the Georgetown neighborhood of Washington, D.C. Founded in 1789, it is the oldest Catholic university in the United States...
.
Khalidi is married to Mona Khalidi
Mona Khalidi
Mona Khalidi is the Assistant Dean of Student Affairs and the Assistant Director of Graduate Studies of the School of International and Public Affairs at Columbia University. She is the wife of Columbia University historian Rashid Khalidi....
, who is the Assistant Dean of Student Affairs and the Assistant Director of Graduate Studies of the School of International and Public Affairs at Columbia University.
He is a member of the National Advisory Committee of the U.S. Interreligious Committee for Peace in the Middle East, which describes itself as "a national organization of Jews, Christians and Muslims dedicated to dialogue, education and advocacy for peace based on the deepest teachings of the three religious traditions."
He is member of the Board of Sponsors of The Palestine–Israel Journal, a publication founded by Ziad AbuZayyad and Victor Cygielman, prominent Palestinian and Israeli journalists. He is founding trustee of The Center for Palestine Research and Studies. He is also a member of the Council on Foreign Relations
Council on Foreign Relations
The Council on Foreign Relations is an American nonprofit nonpartisan membership organization, publisher, and think tank specializing in U.S. foreign policy and international affairs...
.
In October 2010, Khalidi delivered the annual Edward Said memorial lecture at the Palestine Center
Palestine Center
The Palestine Center is an independent think tank based in Foggy Bottom, Washington, D.C.. Their focus is on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and other Middle East issues....
in Washington.
Academic work
Khalidi’s research covers primarily the history ofHistory of the Middle East
This article is a general overview of the history of the Middle East. For more detailed information, see articles on the histories of individual countries and regions...
the modern Middle East
Middle East
The Middle East is a region that encompasses Western Asia and Northern Africa. It is often used as a synonym for Near East, in opposition to Far East...
. He focuses on the countries of the southern and eastern Mediterranean
Eastern Mediterranean
The Eastern Mediterranean is a term that denotes the countries geographically to the east of the Mediterranean Sea. This region is also known as Greater Syria or the Levant....
, with an eye to the emergence of various national identities and the role played by external powers in their development. He also researches the impact of the press on forming new senses of community, the role of education in the construction of political identity, and in the way narratives have developed over the past centuries in the region. Michael C. Hudson, director of the Center for Contemporary Arab Studies
Center for Contemporary Arab Studies
The Center for Contemporary Arab Studies at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C., United States is a notable academic center and "the only academic center in the United States focusing essentially on the Arab world."-Funding:...
at Georgetown, describes Khalidi as "preeminent in his field." He served as President of the Middle East Studies Association of North America
Middle East Studies Association of North America
Middle East Studies Association of North America is a learned society, and according to its website, "a non-political association that fosters the study of the Middle East, promotes high standards of scholarship and teaching, and encourages public understanding of the region and its peoples...
in 1994 and is currently the editor of the Journal of Palestine Studies
Journal of Palestine Studies
The Journal of Palestine Studies is an academic journal established in 1971. It is published and distributed by University of California Press on behalf of the Institute for Palestine Studies. The current editor is Rashid Khalidi of Columbia University....
.
Much of Khalidi's scholarly work in the 1990s focused on the historical construction of nationalism in the Arab world. Drawing on the work of theorist Benedict Anderson
Benedict Anderson
Benedict Richard O'Gorman Anderson is Aaron L. Binenkorb Professor Emeritus of International Studies, Government & Asian Studies at Cornell University, and is best known for his celebrated book Imagined Communities, first published in 1983...
who described nations as "imagined communities
Imagined communities
Imagined communities are a concept coined by Benedict Anderson. He believes that a nation is a community socially constructed, imagined by the people who perceive themselves as part of that group...
", he does not posit primordial national identities, but argues that these nations have legitimacy and rights. In Palestinian Identity: The Construction of Modern National Consciousness (1997), he places the emergence of Palestinian national identity in the context of Ottoman
Ottoman Empire
The Ottoman EmpireIt was usually referred to as the "Ottoman Empire", the "Turkish Empire", the "Ottoman Caliphate" or more commonly "Turkey" by its contemporaries...
and British colonialism as well as the early Zionist effort
Zionism
Zionism is a Jewish political movement that, in its broadest sense, has supported the self-determination of the Jewish people in a sovereign Jewish national homeland. Since the establishment of the State of Israel, the Zionist movement continues primarily to advocate on behalf of the Jewish state...
in the Levant
Levant
The Levant or ) is the geographic region and culture zone of the "eastern Mediterranean littoral between Anatolia and Egypt" . The Levant includes most of modern Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, Israel, the Palestinian territories, and sometimes parts of Turkey and Iraq, and corresponds roughly to the...
. Palestinian Identity won the Middle East Studies Association
Middle East Studies Association of North America
Middle East Studies Association of North America is a learned society, and according to its website, "a non-political association that fosters the study of the Middle East, promotes high standards of scholarship and teaching, and encourages public understanding of the region and its peoples...
’s top honor, the Albert Hourani Prize as best book of 1997.
His dating of the emergence of Palestinian nationalism to the early 20th century and his tracing of its contours provide a rejoinder to Israeli nationalist claims that Palestinians had no collective claims prior to the 1948 creation of Israel. His signature work, Palestinian Identity: The Construction of Modern National Consciousness (Columbia University Press, 1997), argues that Arabs living in Palestine began to regard themselves as a distinct people decades before 1948, "and that the struggle against Zionism does not by itself sufficiently explain Palestinian nationalism."
In it, Khalidi also describes the late development, failings and internal divisions within the various elements of the Palestinian nationalist movement.
In Resurrecting Empire: Western Footprints and America's Perilous Path in the Middle East (2004), Khalidi takes readers on a historical tour of Western involvement in the Middle East, and argues that these interactions continue to have a colonialist
Colonialism
Colonialism is the establishment, maintenance, acquisition and expansion of colonies in one territory by people from another territory. It is a process whereby the metropole claims sovereignty over the colony and the social structure, government, and economics of the colony are changed by...
nature that is both morally unacceptable and likely to backfire. Khalidi's most recent book, Sowing Crisis, places the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
approach to the Middle East in historical context. He is sharply critical of U.S. policies during the Cold War
Cold War
The Cold War was the continuing state from roughly 1946 to 1991 of political conflict, military tension, proxy wars, and economic competition between the Communist World—primarily the Soviet Union and its satellite states and allies—and the powers of the Western world, primarily the United States...
, writing that Cold War policies "formulated to oppose the Soviets, consistently undermined democracy and exacerbated tensions in the Middle East."
Khalidi has written, "It may seem hard to believe today, but for decades the United States was in fact a major patron, indeed in some respects the major patron, of earlier incarnations" of radical, militant Islam, in order to use all possible resources in waging the Cold War
Cold War
The Cold War was the continuing state from roughly 1946 to 1991 of political conflict, military tension, proxy wars, and economic competition between the Communist World—primarily the Soviet Union and its satellite states and allies—and the powers of the Western world, primarily the United States...
. He adds, "The Cold War was over, but its tragic sequels, its toxic debris, and its unexploded mines continued to cause great harm, in ways largely unrecognized in American discourse."
Historian and Israeli Ambassador to the United States Michael Oren
Michael Oren
Michael B. Oren is an American-born Israeli historian and author and the Israeli ambassador to the United States...
acknowledges that "Khalidi is mainstream" because "the stream itself has changed. The criteria for scholarship have become very political."
Palestinian Identity
Palestinian Identity: The Construction of Modern National Consciousness (1997), is Khalidi's most influential and most widely cited book. In Palestinian Identity, Khalidi demonstrates that a Palestinian national consciousness had it origins near the beginning of the twentieth century. Khalidi describes the Arab population of British Mandatory Palestine as having "overlapping identities," with some or many expressing loyalties to villages, regions, a projected nation of Palestine, an alternative of inclusion in a Greater Syria, an Arab national project, as well as to Islam. Nevertheless, Palestinian Identity was the first to demonstrate substantive Palestinian nationalismPalestinian nationalism
Palestinian nationalism is the national movement of the Palestinian people. It has roots in Pan-Arabism and other movements rejecting colonialism and calling for national independence. More recently, Palestinian Nationalism is expressed through the Israeli–Palestinian conflict...
in the early Mandatory period. As Khalidi writes, "Local patriotism could not yet be described as nation-state nationalism."
Khalidi also documents active opposition by the Arab press to Zionism
Zionism
Zionism is a Jewish political movement that, in its broadest sense, has supported the self-determination of the Jewish people in a sovereign Jewish national homeland. Since the establishment of the State of Israel, the Zionist movement continues primarily to advocate on behalf of the Jewish state...
in the 1880s.
Public life
Khalidi has written dozens of scholarly articles on Middle East history and politics, as well as op-ed pieces in many U.S. newspapers. He has also been a guest on radio and TV shows including All Things ConsideredAll Things Considered
All Things Considered is the flagship news program on the American network National Public Radio. It was the first news program on NPR, and is broadcast live worldwide through several outlets...
, Talk of the Nation
Talk of the Nation
Talk of the Nation is a talk radio program based in the United States, produced by National Public Radio, and is broadcast nationally from 2 to 4 p.m. Eastern Time. Its focus is current events and controversial issues....
, Morning Edition
Morning Edition
Morning Edition is an American radio news program produced and distributed by National Public Radio . It airs weekday mornings and runs for two hours, and many stations repeat one or both hours. The show feeds live from 05:00 to 09:00 ET, with feeds and updates as required until noon...
, Worldview
Worldview (radio show)
Worldview is Chicago Public Media's daily international-affairs radio show, hosted by Jerome McDonnell. It features conversations about international issues as well as their local connections...
, The News Hour with Jim Lehrer, Charlie Rose
Charlie Rose
Charles Peete "Charlie" Rose, Jr. is an American television talk show host and journalist. Since 1991 he has hosted Charlie Rose, an interview show distributed nationally by PBS since 1993...
, and Nightline, and has appeared on the BBC
BBC
The British Broadcasting Corporation is a British public service broadcaster. Its headquarters is at Broadcasting House in the City of Westminster, London. It is the largest broadcaster in the world, with about 23,000 staff...
, the CBC
Canadian Broadcasting Corporation
The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, commonly known as CBC and officially as CBC/Radio-Canada, is a Canadian crown corporation that serves as the national public radio and television broadcaster...
, France Inter
France Inter
France Inter is a major French public radio channel and part of Radio France. It is a "generalist" station, aiming to provide a wide national audience with a full service of news and intelligent spoken-word programming, both serious and entertaining, liberally punctuated with an eclectic mix of...
and the Voice of America
Voice of America
Voice of America is the official external broadcast institution of the United States federal government. It is one of five civilian U.S. international broadcasters working under the umbrella of the Broadcasting Board of Governors . VOA provides a wide range of programming for broadcast on radio...
. He served as president of the American Committee on Jerusalem, now known as the American Task Force on Palestine
American Task Force on Palestine
The American Task Force on Palestine is an organization founded in 2003 to advocate that it is in the American national interest to promote an end to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict through the creation of a Palestinian state that will live alongside Israel in peace and security...
.
Views on Israeli-Palestinian conflict
Khalidi has written that the establishment of the state of Israel resulted in "the uprootingJewish exodus from Arab lands
The Jewish exodus from Arab and Muslim countries was a mass departure, flight and expulsion of Jews, primarily of Sephardi and Mizrahi background, from Arab and Muslim countries, from 1948 until the early 1970s...
of the world's oldest and most secure Jewish communities, which had found in the Arab lands a tolerance that, albeit imperfect, was nonexistent in the often genocidal, Jew-hating Christian West." Regarding the proposed two-state solution
Two-state solution
The two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is the consensus solution that is currently under discussion by the key parties to the conflict, most recently at the Annapolis Conference in November 2007...
to the Israel-Palestinian conflict, Khalidi has written that "the now universally applauded two-state solution faces the juggernaut of Israel's actions in the occupied territories over more than forty years, actions that have been expressly designed to make its realization in any meaningful form impossible." However, Khalidi also noted that "there are also flaws in the alternatives, grouped under the rubric of the one-state solution".
Regarding American support for Israel, Khalidi stated in an interview that "every other single place on the face of the earth is in support of the Palestinians, yet all of them together aren't a hill of beans compared to the United States and Israel, because the United States and Israel can basically do anything they please. They are the world superpower, they are the regional superpower."
A New York Sun
New York Sun
The New York Sun was a weekday daily newspaper published in New York City from 2002 to 2008. When it debuted on April 16, 2002, adopting the name, motto, and masthead of an otherwise unrelated earlier New York paper, The Sun , it became the first general-interest broadsheet newspaper to be started...
editorial criticized Khalidi for stating that there is a legal right under international law for Palestinians to resist Israeli occupation. For example, in a speech given to the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee
American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee
The American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee states that it is the largest Arab American grassroots civil rights organization in the United States. According to its web page it is open to people of all backgrounds, faiths and ethnicities and has over 40 chapters in 24 states and members in all...
, Khalidi said that “[k]illing civilians is a war crime. It’s a violation of international law. They are not soldiers. They’re civilians, they’re unarmed. The ones who are armed, the ones who are soldiers, the ones who are in occupation, that's different. That's resistance.” The Sun editorial argued that by failing to distinguish between Palestinian combatants and noncombatants, Khalidi implies that all Palestinians have this right to resist, which it claimed was incorrect under international law. In an interview discussing this editorial, Khalidi objected to this characterization as incorrect and taken out of the context of his statements on international law.
Khalidi has described discussions of Arab restitution for property confiscated from the Jewish refugees
Jewish exodus from Arab lands
The Jewish exodus from Arab and Muslim countries was a mass departure, flight and expulsion of Jews, primarily of Sephardi and Mizrahi background, from Arab and Muslim countries, from 1948 until the early 1970s...
from Middle Eastern and North African countries after the creation of Israel]] as “insidious”, "because the advocates of Jewish refugees are not working to get those legitimate assets back but are in fact trying to cancel out the debt of Israel toward Palestinian refugees."
Khalidi opposes the Iraq War and has said that “we owe reparations to the Iraqi people.”
NYC teacher training program
In 2005 Khalidi's participation in a New York City teacher training program was ended by the city's Schools Chancellor. The Chancellor, Joel I. Klein, issued a statement that “Considering his past statements, Rashid Khalidi should not have been included in a program that provided professional development for [Department of Education] teachers and he won't be participating in the future.” Following the decision, Columbia University president Lee BollingerLee Bollinger
Lee Carroll Bollinger is an American lawyer and educator who is currently serving as the 19th president of Columbia University. Formerly the president of the University of Michigan, he is a noted legal scholar of the First Amendment and freedom of speech...
spoke out on Khalidi's behalf, writing: "The department's decision to dismiss Professor Khalidi from the program was wrong and violates First Amendment principles... The decision was based solely on his purported political views and was made without any consultation and apparently without any review of the facts."
2008 U.S. presidential campaign
Consequent to publication by the Los Angeles TimesLos Angeles Times
The Los Angeles Times is a daily newspaper published in Los Angeles, California, since 1881. It was the second-largest metropolitan newspaper in circulation in the United States in 2008 and the fourth most widely distributed newspaper in the country....
of an article about Obama's attendance at a 2003 farewell dinner for Khalidi, their relationship became an issue in the campaign. Some opponents of Barack Obama
Barack Obama
Barack Hussein Obama II is the 44th and current President of the United States. He is the first African American to hold the office. Obama previously served as a United States Senator from Illinois, from January 2005 until he resigned following his victory in the 2008 presidential election.Born in...
claimed that the relationship between Obama and Khalidi was evidence that Obama would not maintain a pro-Israel foreign policy if elected. When asked, Obama called his own commitment to Israel "unshakeable" and he does not consult with Khalidi on foreign policy. Opponents of Republican candidate John McCain
John McCain
John Sidney McCain III is the senior United States Senator from Arizona. He was the Republican nominee for president in the 2008 United States election....
pointed out that he had served as chairman of the International Republican Institute
International Republican Institute
Founded in 1983, the International Republican Institute is an organization, funded by the United States government, that conducts international political programs, sometimes labeled 'democratization programs'....
(IRI) during the 1990s which provided grants worth $500,000 to the Center for Palestine Research and Studies, which was co-founded by Khalidi, for the purpose of polling the views of the Palestinian people.
Criticism
New York Times columnist Clyde Haberman said of Khalidi's book The Story of the Palestinian Struggle for Statehood: "But he makes this more than an exercise in self-pity by refusing to let the Palestinians themselves off the hook. If they indeed live in an iron cage, well, Khalidi says, they helped mold the bars themselves" and asks "When he talks about repressive Israeli measures having been 'sometimes imposed on the pretext of security,' critics are bound to ask: What pretext? How many suicide bombings of cafes and pizza shops does it take before a country has a right to end them by any method that seems to work?"Efraim Karsh
Efraim Karsh
Efraim Karsh is professor and head of Middle East and Mediterranean Studies at King's College London, and director of the Philadelphia-based think tank, the Middle East Forum...
said about the same book "One would have hoped that after 80 years of stubborn adherence to the 'one-state solution' and an equally adamant rejection of the 'two-state solution,' which have resulted in Palestinian statelessness, all but the most fanatically self-deluded would grasp the root causes of the Palestinian debacle — not least a historian purporting to redress the 'continuing refusal to look honestly at what has happened in this small land over the past century or so.'"
Published works
- British Policy towards Syria and Palestine, 1906-1914. Ithaca Press for St. Antony's College, 1980.
- Palestine and the Gulf (Co-editor), Institute for Palestine Studies, 1982.
- Under Siege: PLO Decision-making during the 1982 War. Columbia University Press, 1986.
- The Origins of Arab Nationalism (Co-editor), Columbia University Press, 1991.
- Palestinian Identity: The Construction of Modern National Consciousness, Columbia University Press, 1997.
- Resurrecting Empire: Western Footprints and America's Perilous Path in the Middle East, Beacon Press, 2004.
- Sowing Crisis: The Cold War and American Dominance in the Middle East, Beacon Press, 2009.
External links
- Columbia University faculty page
- Profile on Rashid Khalidi at the Institute for Middle East Understanding
- Video: Rashid Khalidi - Palestine: 40 Years of Occupation, 60 Years of Dispossession (June 23, 2007)
- Review of Rhashid Khalidi's Resurrecting Empire, Western Footprints, and America's Path in the Middle East at Logosjournal.com
- Review of The Iron Cage by Rashid Khalid at the Institute for Middle East Understanding
- Interview with the Author of The Iron Cage 4 Oct 2006 Alternative RadioAlternative RadioAlternative Radio is an internationally syndicated, one-hour, weekly radio program, featuring serious interviews with humanitarian and progressive thinkers. Begun in 1986, it evolved from a program that journalist David Barsamian hosted on community radio station KGNU-FM, in Boulder, Colorado. AR...
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