Rashid Khalidi

Rashid Khalidi
Born	1950 New York, New York
Citizenship	American
Alma mater	Yale University Oxford University
Known for	Histories of nationalism and colonialism in Palestine and the Middle East
Scientific career
Fields	History
Institutions	University of Chicago Columbia University Georgetown University

Rashid Khalidi (born 1950), an 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.

Family, education and career

Khalidi was born in New York. He received a B.A. from Yale University, where he was a member of Wolf's Head Society, in 1970, and a D. Phil. from Oxford University in 1974 and spent many 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 before joining the Columbia faculty. He has also taught at Georgetown University, Lebanese University, and the American University of Beirut.

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.

Academic work

Khalidi’s research covers primarily the history of 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. Khalidi is currently 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 theorists Benedict Anderson who described nations as "imagined communities", he does not posit primordial national identities, but clearly 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. This book won the Middle East Studies Association’s Albert Hourani Prize as best book of 1997. His dating of Palestinian national emergence to the early 20th century and his tracing of its contours provide a rejoinder to Israeli nationalist claims that Palestinians either do not exist, or had no collective claims prior to the 1948 creation of Israel. Nevertheless, Khalidi is also careful to focus on the late development, failings and internal divisions within the various elements of the Palestinian nationalist movement as well.

In Resurrecting Empire: Western Footprints and America's Perilous Path in the Middle East (2004), Khalidi takes readers on a historical tour of Western intervention in the Middle East, and argues that these interventions continue to have a colonialist nature that is both morally unacceptable and likely to backfire.

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 numerous radio and TV shows including All Things Considered, Talk of the Nation, Morning Edition, 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. Khalidi had an advising role at the Madrid Conference of 1991 between the U.S., Israel, Palestinians and Arab states. He served as president of the American Committee on Jerusalem, now known as the American Task Force on Palestine.

Khalidi's statements on the status of Palestinians in Israel and the Israeli-occupied territories have been the most controversial. In an interview on PBS, Khalidi used the term "occupied" in reference to Mandatory Palestine in 1948, saying "about half of it was occupied by Israel (which under UNGA 181 was supposed to obtain roughly 55% of Mandate Palestine, and which by the time of the armistice had taken control of about 78%, including half of what was to have been the Arab state)... the remainder was, as you say, under Egyptian and Jordanian control from 1948-1967."

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 argued 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 Jewish refugees forced to flee 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.”

Views on Israel and Zionism

Khalidi has written that the establishment of the state of Israel resulted in "the uprooting 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."

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 Bollinger 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."

Relationships with 2008 Presidential candidates

John McCain

John McCain 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 for the purpose of polling the views of the Palestinian people. The Center was co-founded by Khalidi. A copy of the IRS filing for the IRI was published online showing the grant and IRI members.

Barack Obama

During the 2008 election race, some opponents of Barack Obama said a reported relationship between Obama and Khalidi was evidence that Obama would not maintain a pro-Israel foreign policy if elected. Martin Peretz, editor of The New Republic and an advisor to the pro-Israel Washington Institute for Near East Policy, disagreed. "I assume that my Zionist credentials are not in dispute. And I have written more appreciative words about Khalidi than Obama ever uttered...the Israelis are trying to live cooperatively and in peace with Palestinians whose unrelenting positions make Khalidi almost appear like a Zionist."

In an appearance at the B'nai Tora synagogue in Florida in May 2008, Obama said Khalidi "is not one of my foreign policy people" and called him "a respected scholar, although he vehemently disagrees with a lot of Israel’s policy." Obama said his own commitment to Israel is "unshakeable."

In April 2008, The Los Angeles Times reported on Obama's attendance at a 2003 farewell dinner for Khalidi at the University of Chicago—while both were professors at the university—citing a video from the party.

Works

This abbreviated list includes only books written by Khalidi. For other works, including papers, articles, and chapters in edited volumes, see Rashid Khalidi bibliography.

• The Iron Cage: The Story of the Palestinian Struggle for Statehood, Beacon Press, 2006.
• Resurrecting Empire: Western Footprints and America's Perilous Path in the Middle East, Beacon Press, 2004.
• Palestinian Identity: The Construction of Modern National Consciousness, Columbia University Press, 1997.
• The Origins of Arab Nationalism (Co-editor), Columbia University Press, 1991.
• Under Siege: PLO Decision-making during the 1982 War. Columbia University Press, 1986.
• Palestine and the Gulf (Co-editor), Institute for Palestine Studies, 1982.
• British Policy towards Syria and Palestine, 1906-1914. Ithaca Press for St. Antony's College, 1980.

External links

• Middle East Institute, Columbia University
• 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