Edward Said Dies; U.S. Scholar Was Leading Voice for Palestinians
September 25, 2003
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
NEW YORK (AP) -- Edward W. Said, a Columbia University
professor and leading spokesman in the United States for
the Palestinian cause, has died, his editor at Knopf
publishers said Thursday. He was 67.
Said had suffered from leukemia for years and died at a New
York hospital late Wednesday, editor Shelley Wanger said.
Said was born in 1935 in Jerusalem, then part of
British-ruled Palestine, but he spent most of his adult
life in the United States. He wrote passionately about the
Palestinian cause but also on a variety of other subjects,
from English literature, his academic specialty, to music
and culture.
When it came to the Arab-Israeli conflict, Said was
consistently critical of Israel for what he regarded as
mistreatment of the Palestinians.
He wrote two years ago after visits to Jerusalem and the
West Bank that Israel's "efforts toward exclusivity and
xenophobia toward the Arabs" had actually strengthened
Palestinian determination.
"Palestine and Palestinians remain, despite Israel's
concerted efforts from the beginning either to get rid of
them or to circumscribe them so much as to make them
ineffective," Said wrote in the English-language Al-Ahram
Weekly, published in Cairo.
In 2000, he prompted a controversy when he threw a rock
toward an Israeli guardhouse on the Lebanese border.
Columbia University did not censure him, saying that the
stone was directed at no one, no law was broken and that
his actions were protected by principles of academic
freedom.
Said moved to the United States as a student. He received a
bachelor's degree from Princeton in 1957 and a master's and
Ph.D. from Harvard, in 1960 and 1964.
Most of his academic career was spent as a professor at
Columbia University in New York, but he also was a visiting
professor at such leading institutions as Yale, Harvard and
Johns Hopkins.
His books include "The Question of Palestine" in 1979 and
"After the Last Sky" in 1986.
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/09/25/obituaries/25WIRE-SAID.html?ex=1065506180&ei=1&en=9c8dea5c2757dcf2
Created By: Claire O'Connor