Rashid Khalidi: Facts About the Palestinian-American Historian
Columbia University's Edward Said Professor of Modern Arab Studies is one of the most influential historians of Palestine, and a frequent target in America's political arguments about the Middle East.
Rashid Khalidi is among the most prominent historians of the modern Middle East writing in English. Born in New York in 1948 into a distinguished Jerusalem family, he studied at Yale and Oxford. He taught at the American University of Beirut and the University of Chicago before joining Columbia University, where he held the Edward Said Professorship of Modern Arab Studies until his retirement.
Key facts
- Family. The Khalidi family has produced scholars, officials and librarians in Jerusalem for centuries; the Khalidi Library in the Old City holds a significant collection of manuscripts.
- Scholarship. His books include *Palestinian Identity* (1997), a study of how Palestinian national consciousness formed; *The Iron Cage* (2006), on the failure to create a Palestinian state; *Brokers of Deceit* (2013), a critique of US mediation; and *The Hundred Years' War on Palestine* (2020), a widely read history framing the conflict as a settler-colonial struggle.
- Negotiations. He served as an adviser to the Palestinian delegation at the Madrid and Washington peace talks in 1991–93.
- Public debate. He has been attacked by critics in US politics and the media, notably during the 2008 presidential campaign because of past social ties with Barack Obama in Chicago. His defenders regard him as a serious scholar targeted for his views.
Why he matters
Khalidi's work combines archival history with an argument: that the Palestinian story is best understood through the long history of colonialism, great-power involvement and the choices of Palestinian leaders themselves, whom he often criticises. His books are standard reading for students of the region, whatever their politics.