Who Was Edward Said? A Beginner's Guide

If you have taken a college course in literature, history or cultural studies, you have probably met Edward Said, even if only in a footnote. The Palestinian American scholar changed how a whole generation thinks about culture and power.

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Early life

Said was born in Jerusalem on November 1, 1935, to a Palestinian Christian family, and spent his childhood between Jerusalem and Cairo. He came to the US as a teenager for boarding school, went on to Princeton and earned his PhD at Harvard.

Forty years at Columbia

In 1963 Said joined Columbia University in New York, where he taught English and comparative literature until his death in 2003. Students remember him as a demanding, generous teacher, and he became one of the best-known public intellectuals in America.

Orientalism and after

Orientalism, published in 1978, showed how Western novels, paintings and scholarship built a stereotyped image of Arabs and the East. The book launched postcolonial studies. He followed it with The Question of Palestine (1979), After the Last Sky (1986) with photographer Jean Mohr, and Culture and Imperialism (1993).

A voice for Palestine

Said wrote and spoke about Palestine in newspapers, on TV and in lecture halls across the US. He was a member of the Palestinian National Council and later openly criticized the Oslo Accords of 1993.

Music and memoir

He was also a serious pianist and music critic. In 1999 he and conductor Daniel Barenboim founded the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra for young musicians from across the Middle East. The same year he published Out of Place, a memoir of his early years.

Our Exist. Resist. Return. design spells out three words in bold green, black and red, a short summary of ideas Said wrote about for decades.

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