Rashid Khalidi will deliver the Fall 2025 Edward W. Said Memorial Lecture titled, "This is Not War."

Rashid Khalidi is the Edward Said Professor Emeritus of Modern Arab Studies at Columbia University. He received a BA from Yale University in 1970 and a DPhil 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.

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. University 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 University Professor Said by bringing to Columbia speakers who embody his beliefs and the legacy of his work.

Introduction by Lisa Anderson, 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 to 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.

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.

The Edward W. Said Memorial Lecture is made possible in part by the generosity of The JKW Foundation.