Rashid Khalidi

Rashid Ismail Khalidi (رشيد خالدي; born 1948) is a Palestinian-American historian of the Middle East and the Edward Said Professor of Modern Arab Studies at Columbia University.

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.

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.

"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.

Khalidi has said that he was not a PLO spokesman, and 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.

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.

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".

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.

He served as president of the Middle East Studies Association of North America in 1994 and is currently co-editor of the Journal of Palestine Studies with Sherene Seikaly.

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 Book Award as best book of 1997.

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".

He served as editor of the Journal of Palestine Studies from 2002 until 2020, when he became co-editor with Sherene Seikaly.

He has authored a number of books, including The Hundred Years' War on Palestine and Palestinian Identity: The Construction of Modern National Consciousness; has served as president of the Middle East Studies Association; and has taught at the Lebanese University, the American University of Beirut, Georgetown University, and the University of Chicago.

Khalidi was born in New York City.

Khalidi is the son of Ismail Khalidi and the nephew of Husayin al-Khalidi.

He is the father of playwright Ismail Khalidi and activist/attorney, Dima Khalidi.

He grew up in New York City, where his father, a Saudi citizen of Palestinian origin who was born in Jerusalem, worked for the United Nations.

Khalidi's mother, a Lebanese-American, was an interior decorator.

Khalidi attended the United Nations International School.

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 served as 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.

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".