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Said '57, noted Palestinian writer and advocate, dies at
age 67
RAHA/29/Septamber/2003
Princeton alumnus Edward Said '57, one of the country's most ardent
advocates of Palestinian causes and
 a distinguished scholar of
comparative literature and cultural studies at Columbia University, died
Thursday at age 67. He had leukemia and was living on the Upper West
Side of New York City.
He is survived by his wife, Mariam Cortas, and his children, Wadie
and Najla, both of whom went to Princeton.
Said, who received his doctorate at Harvard, was born in Jerusalem
and came to the United States as a teenager. His most noted books were
"Culture and Imperialism" and "Orientalism," in which he slams Western
intellectual approaches to studying the Middle East and North Africa as
politically-motivated and based off false stereotypes.
But Said became equally known for his own political activism on
behalf of Palestinians. He was a vocal critic of U.S. and Israeli policy
toward Palestinian areas and a major advocate of a Palestinian state.
He was a supporter of Yasir Arafat, the Palestinian leader, and was
said to have convinced him to support Israel's right to exist to
facilitate the Middle East peace process.
Said, who spoke Arabic and English, repudiated terrorism, though he
harshly characterized Israel's treatment of Palestinians in disputed
territories.
He was most known in academic circles for "Orientalism," the 1978
book that argued that "every European, in what he could say about the
Orient, was a racist, an imperialist, and almost totally ethnocentric."
Said has published more than 20 other books.
He
has visited his alma mater from time to time, though he hasn't been an
omnipresent figure, and he stopped by to lecture in April 2001.
Source:
http://www.dailyprincetonian.com/ |
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RAHA