Rashid Khalidi

Rashid Khalidi was born in New York City in 1948 to a distinguished Palestinian family from Jerusalem. He studied at Yale and Oxford, taught at the American University of Beirut and the University of Chicago, and in 2003 became the Edward Said Professor of Modern Arab Studies at Columbia University, where he is now professor emeritus. He served as president of the Middle East Studies Association and as an advisor to the Palestinian delegation at the Madrid and Washington negotiations between 1991 and 1993.

His scholarship traces how Palestinian national consciousness formed, and how outside powers shaped — and often foreclosed — Palestinian political life. The Hundred Years’ War on Palestine (2020) brought his argument to a wide readership, framing the conflict as a century-long colonial war waged against a native population. He also edits the Journal of Palestine Studies.

Key works

• Palestinian Identity: The Construction of Modern National Consciousness (1997)
• The Iron Cage: The Story of the Palestinian Struggle for Statehood (2006)
• Brokers of Deceit: How the U.S. Has Undermined Peace in the Middle East (2013)
• The Hundred Years’ War on Palestine (2020)

Sources

• Rashid Khalidi — Columbia SIPA faculty profile
• Rashid Khalidi — St Antony’s College, Oxford