Rashid Khalidi - Family, Education and Career

Family, Education and Career

Khalidi was born in New York. Khalidi is the son of Ismail Khalidi and the nephew of Husayin al-Khalidi. He is the father of playwright Ismail Khalidi. He grew up in New York City, where his father, a Saudi citizen of Palestinian origins who was born in Jerusalem, worked for the United Nations. Khalidi's mother, a Lebanese-American born in the United States, was an interior decorator. Khalidi attended the United Nations International School.

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. 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. "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. However, Khalidi has denied that he was a PLO spokesman, stating 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.

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". 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 is the 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.