The Edward W. Said Memorial Lecture: This is Not War

PLEASE NOTE: Registration is required, but does not guarantee admission. There is a limit of one (1) reservation per person, and only those registered are eligible to attend. Check-in begins at 5:30PM. Seating is limited and first come, first served.

Rashid Khalidi is Edward Said Professor Emeritus of Modern Arab Studies at Columbia University. He received a B.A. from Yale University in 1970 and a D. Phil. from Oxford University in 1974, and has taught at the Lebanese University, the American University of Beirut, and the University of Chicago. He was President of the Middle East Studies Association, and was co-editor of the Journal of Palestine Studies. He served as an advisor to the Palestinian delegation to the Madrid and Washington Arab-Israeli peace negotiations from October 1991 until June 1993.

Khalidi is the author of eight books, including the bestselling The Hundred Years’ War on Palestine: A History of Settler-Colonialism and Resistance, 1917-2017 (2020), and Palestinian Identity: The Construction of Modern National Consciousness (rev. ed. 2010). He has co-edited three other books and has published over 120 academic articles. He has written op-eds in many newspapers and has appeared widely on TV, radio, and podcasts in the US and abroad. He is currently working on a book on Britain, Ireland, and Palestine, tentatively entitled “The First and the Last.”

Lisa Anderson (moderator) is Special Lecturer and James T. Shotwell Professor Emerita of International Relations at the Columbia University School of International and Public Affairs. Dr. Anderson served as Provost and then President of the American University in Cairo between 2008 and 2016. She is Dean Emerita of the School of International and Public Affairs at Columbia, where she led the school from 1997-2007. She was on the faculty of Columbia since 1986; she also taught at Princeton University’s Woodrow Wilson School and in the Government and Social Studies departments at Harvard University. She is a trustee of the Aga Khan University and member emerita of the Board of Directors of Human Rights Watch; she also served as President of the Middle East Studies Association, and as Chair of the Board of the Social Science Research Council

The Edward W. Said Memorial Lecture is given in honor of the public intellectual and literary critic, Edward W. Said, who taught in the English & Comparative Literature Department at Columbia from 1963 until 2003. Professor Said was perhaps best known for his books Orientalism, published in 1978, and Culture and Imperialism, published in 1993, both of which made major contributions to the field of cultural and postcolonial studies. The Edward W. Said Memorial Lecture, organized by the Society of Fellows and Heyman Center for the Humanities, pays tribute to Professor Said by bringing to Columbia speakers who embody his beliefs and the legacy of his work.