 | birth_place    = Jerusalem, British Mandate of Palestine | death_date     =  | death_place    = New York City, New York, United States | religion       = Christianity |school_tradition = Postcolonialism, Postmodernism |notable_ideas    = Occidentalism, Orientalism, &quot;The Other&quot; | influences     = Derrida, Vico, Shakespeare, Hopkins, Gramsci, Adorno, Conrad, Blackmur, Williams, Foucault, Chomsky. | influenced     = Hamid Dabashi, Homi K. Bhabha, John Esposito, Gayatri Spivak, Christopher Hitchens, Robert Fisk, Mahmood Mamdani, Rashid Khalidi, Joseph Massad, Nigel Gibson, Derek Gregory, Partha Chatterjee, Ranajit Guha. }}  '''Edward Wadie Saïd''' ( , ; 1 November 1935 &amp;ndash; 25 September 2003) was a Palestinian American literary theorist and advocate for Palestinian rights. He was University Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University and a founding figure in postcolonialism.Robert Young, ''White Mythologies: Writing History and the West'', New York &amp; London: Routledge, 1990. Robert Fisk described him as the Palestinians' &quot;most powerful political voice.&quot;Robert Fisk, [ &quot;Why bombing Ashkelon is the most tragic irony&quot;], ''The Independent'', 12 December 2008. Retrieved 4 January 2010.  Said was an influential cultural critic and author, known best for his book ''Orientalism'' (1978), which catapulted him to international academic fame.Martin Kramer, [ &quot;Edward Said, Malcolm Kerr, and Honors at AUB&quot;]. 26 June 2003. Accessed 5 January 2010. The book presented his influential ideas on Orientalism, the Western study of Eastern cultures. Said contended that Orientalist scholarship was and continues to be inextricably tied to the imperialist societies that produced it, making much of the work inherently politicized, servile to power, and therefore suspect. Grounding much of this thesis in his intimate knowledge of colonial literature such as the fiction of Conrad, and in the post-structuralist theory of Foucault, Derrida and others, Said's ''Orientalism'' and following works proved influential in literary theory and criticism, and continue to influence several other fields in the humanities. ''Orientalism'' affected Middle Eastern studies in particular, transforming the way practitioners of the discipline describe and examine the Middle East.Stephen Howe, [ &quot;Dangerous mind?&quot;], ''New Humanist'', Vol. 123, November/December 2008 Said came to discuss and vigorously debate the issue of Orientalism with scholars in the fields of history and area studies, many of whom disagreed with his thesis, including most famously Bernard Lewis.Oleg Grabar, Edward Said, Bernard Lewis, [ &quot;Orientalism: An Exchange&quot;], ''New York Review of Books'', Vol. 29, No. 13. 12 August 1982. Accessed 4 January 2010.  Said also came to be known as a public intellectual who frequently discussed contemporary politics, music, culture, and literature, in lectures, newspaper and magazine columns, and books. Drawing on his own experience as a Palestinian growing up in a Palestinian Christian family in the Middle East at the time of the creation of Israel, Said argued for the creation of a Palestinian state, equal rights for Palestinians in Israel, including the right of return, and for increased pressure on Israel, especially by the United States. He also criticized several Arab and Muslim regimes.Richard Bernstein, [ &quot;Edward Said, Literary Critic and Advocate for Palestinian Independence, Dies at 67&quot;], ''New York Times''. 26 September 2003. Accessed 5 January 2010. Having received a Western education in the US, where he lived from his high school years until his death, Said tried to use his dual heritage, the subject of his prize-winning memoir ''Out of Place'' (1999), to bridge the gap between the West and the Middle East and to improve the situation in Israel-Palestine. He was a member of the Palestinian National Council for over a decade and his pro-Palestinian activism made him a figure of considerable controversy.Andrew N. Rubin, [ &quot;Edward W. Said&quot;], ''Arab Studies Quarterly'', Fall 2004: p.1. Accessed 5 January 2010.  With his friend Daniel Barenboim, Said co-founded the award-winning West-Eastern Divan Orchestra, made up of children from Israel, the Palestinian territories, and surrounding Arab nations. It opened in 1999. Said was also an accomplished pianist.Democracy Now!, [ &quot;Edward Said Archive&quot;], DemocracyNow.org, 2003. Accessed 4 January 2010. In 2002, he and Barenboim published a book of their earlier conversations on music, titled ''Parallels and Paradoxes: Explorations in Music and Society''. Active until his last months, Said died in 2003 after a decade-long battle with leukemia.  ==Early life== Rosemarie 1940]] Said was born in Jerusalem (then in the British Mandate of Palestine) on November 1, 1935. His father, a US citizen with Protestant Palestinian origins, was a businessman and had served under General Pershing in World War I. He moved to Cairo in the decade before Edward's birth.  His mother, born in Nazareth, also had a Protestant backgroundAmritjit Singh, ''Interviews With Edward W. Said'' (Oxford: UP of Mississippi, 2004) 19 &amp; 219. and was half-Lebanese.Edward Said, ''[ Defamation, Revisionist Style]'', ''CounterPunch'', 1999. Accessed 7 February 2010. His sister was the historian and writer Rosemarie Said Zahlan.  Said lived &quot;between worlds&quot; in both Cairo and Jerusalem until age 12. He claims to have attended the Anglican St. George's Academy in 1947 in Jerusalem, but this has been a matter of some dispute. Amos Elon, biographer of the founders of Israel, wrote in ''The New York Review of Books'' that Weiner failed to disprove that, in the winter of 1947–48, Said &quot;and his family sought refuge from the war outside Palestine, as did hundreds of thousands of other Palestinians at the time. The fact remains that shortly afterward the family's property in Jerusalem was confiscated. Said and his family became political refugees as the result of the Israeli government's refusal to allow them to return to the country of their birth.&quot;[ ‘Exile’s Return’ by Justus Reid Weiner | The New York Review of Books] In reply, Weiner accused Elon of dishonesty, and Hitchens of making himself &quot;into a poster boy for Palestine.&quot;[ Said critic blasts back at Hitchens - Christopher Hitchens - Salon.com] Said observed that the publishers of ''Commentary'', a conservative magazine, had attacked him in three long articles and that Weiner's was the third in the series.[ Said's full reply to ''Commentary'' on his childhood] Said commented that the article about his early life was &quot;undercut by dozens of mistakes of fact.&quot;Amritjit Singh, ''Interviews with Edward W. Said (Conversations With Public Intellectuals Series).'' Oxford: University Press of Mississippi, 2004: pp. 19 &amp; 219.|group=&quot;nb&quot;}} As the Arab League declared war on Israel in 1947/1948, his family moved from the neighborhood of Talbiya in Jerusalem and returned to Cairo. In a ''London Review of Books'' article, Said gave a more detailed account of his upbringing:   In 1951, Said was expelled from Victoria College for being a &quot;troublemaker&quot;, and was consequently sent by his parents to Mount Hermon School, a private college preparatory school in Massachusetts, where he recalls a &quot;miserable&quot; year of feeling &quot;out of place&quot;. Said later reflected that the decision to send him so far away was heavily influenced by 'the prospects of deracinated people like us being so uncertain that it would be best to send me as far away as possible'. Though these themes of interweaving cultures, feeling out of place, and being far from home affected him dissonantly and would echo through Said's work for the rest of his life, Said managed to do well at the Massachusetts boarding school often 'achieving the rank of either first or second in a class of about a hundred and sixty'.  Fluent in English, French, and Arabic,Edward Said, ''Out of Place'', Vintage Books, 1999: pp. 82-83. Said earned a Bachelor of Arts (1957) from Princeton University, and a Master of Arts (1960) and a Ph.D. (1964) in English Literature from Harvard University.Encyclopædia Britannica Online, [ ''Edward Said''], accessed 03 January 2010.  ==Career== In 1963, Saïd joined the faculty of Columbia University, in the departments of English and Comparative Literature, where he would serve until his death in 2003. In 1974 he was Visiting Professor of Comparative Literature at Harvard, in 1975-6 Fellow of the Center for Advanced Study in Behavioral Science at Stanford, and in 1977, Saïd became the Parr Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia and subsequently became the Old Dominion Foundation Professor in the Humanities. In 1979, Saïd was Visiting Professor of Humanities at Johns Hopkins University.LA Jews For Peace, [ ''The Question of Palestine by Edward Saïd. (1997)''] ''Books on the Israel-Palestinian Conflict - Annotated Bibliography'', accessed 3 January 2010. Saïd was also a visiting professor at Yale University and lectured at more than 100 universities.Dr. Farooq, [ ''Study Resource Page''], Global Web Post, accessed on 3 January 2010. In 1992, he attained the rank of University Professor, Columbia's highest academic position.Columbia University Press, ''About the Author'', Humanism and Democratic Criticism, 2004.  He lived near campus in The Colosseum on Riverside Drive.  Saïd also served as president of the Modern Language Association, editor of the ''Arab Studies Quarterly'', and was a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the executive board of PEN, the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the Royal Society of Literature,  the Council of Foreign Relations, and the American Philosophical Society.Moustafa Bayoumi and Andrew Rubin, eds., ''The Edward Saïd Reader'', Vintage, 2000, pp. xv.  Saïd's writing regularly appeared in ''The Nation'',''The Nation'', [ &quot;Edward W. Saïd.&quot;] Thenation.com. Accessed 5 January 2010. ''The Guardian'', the ''London Review of Books'',''London Review of Books'', [ &quot;Edward Saïd.&quot;] Lrb.org. 2003. Accessed 5 January 2010. ''Le Monde Diplomatique'',''Le Monde Diplomatique'', [ &quot;Edward W. Saïd.&quot;] Dossier. Monde-diplomatique.fr. Accessed 5 January 2010. ''Counterpunch'',CounterPunch, [ &quot;CounterPunch Archives.&quot;] Counterpunch.org. Accessed 5 January 2010. ''Al Ahram,''''Al Ahram'', [ &quot;The death of Edward Saïd.&quot;] Ahram.org. 2003. Accessed 5 January 2010. and the pan-Arab daily ''al-Hayat''. The themes of his writings included literature, politics, the Middle East, music, and culture.  ==Literary criticism== After expanding on his thesis to produce his first book, ''[ Joseph Conrad and the Fiction of Autobiography]'' (1966), Said, swirling with a wealth of ideas which he received from studying the works of Giambattista Vico and others, presented his award-winning second book, ''Beginnings: Intention and Method'' (1974), a work on the theoretical underpinnings of literary critical projects.Edward Said, ''Power, Politics and Culture'', Bloomsbury Publishing, 2001: pp. 77-79. Other literary critical texts by Said include ''The World, the Text, and the Critic'' (1983), ''Nationalism, Colonialism, and Literature: Yeats and Decolonization'' (1988), ''Culture and Imperialism'' (1993), ''Representations of the Intellectual: The 1993 Reith Lectures'' (1994), and the posthumous ''Humanism and Democratic Criticism'' (2004) and ''On Late Style'' (2006).  Fascinated, like his postmodern influences, with how people perceive things in cultural contexts, and by the effects of society, politics and power on literature, Said is considered a founder of postcolonial criticism. His work on Orientalism is particularly important, but his interpretations of Conrad, Jane Austen,Ibn Warraq, [ &quot;Jane Austen and Slavery&quot;], ''New English Review'', July 2007. Accessed 4 January 2010. Rudyard Kipling,Harish Trivedi, [ &quot;'Arguing with the Himalayas': Edward Said and Rudyard Kipling&quot;] ''Asia Pacific Reader'' archive. University of Toronto. Accessed 4 January 2010. Yeats,Andy Morrison, [ &quot;Theories of Post-Coloniality: Edward W. Said and W.B. Yeats&quot;], ''MA studies'', Queen's University of Belfast, 21 May 1998. Accessed 4 January 2010. and other writers have also proven influential among critics.  === “Orientalism” === Said is most famous for describing and critiquing &quot;Orientalism&quot;, which he perceived as a constellation of false assumptions underlying Western attitudes toward the East. In his most famous book, ''Orientalism'' (1978), Said claimed a &quot;subtle and persistent Eurocentric prejudice against Arabo-Islamic peoples and their culture.&quot;Keith Windschuttle, [ &quot;Edward Said's &quot;Orientalism revisited,&quot;] The New Criterion January 17, 1999, accessed January 19, 1999. He argued that a long tradition of false and romanticized images of Asia and the Middle East in Western culture had served as an implicit justification for Europe and the US' colonial and imperial ambitions. Just as fiercely, he denounced the practice of Arab elites who internalized the US and British orientalists' ideas of Arabic culture.    In ''Orientalism'', the book, Said asserted that much western study of Islamic civilization was political intellectualism bent on self-affirmation rather than objective study,Edward Said, ''Orientalism'', Vintage Books, New York, 1979: p. 12. a form of racism, and a tool of imperialist domination. ''Orientalism'' had an impact on the fields of literary theory, cultural studies and human geography, and to a lesser extent on those of history and oriental studies. Taking his cue from the work of Jacques Derrida and Michel Foucault, and from earlier critics of western Orientalism such as A. L. Tibawi,A. L. Tibawi, &quot;English-speaking Orientalists: A Critique of Their Approach to Islam and Arab Nationalism&quot;, ''Islamic Quarterly'' 8 (1964): pp. 25–45. Anouar Abdel-Malek,Anouar Abdel-Malek, &quot;L’orientalisme en crise&quot;, ''Diogène'' 44 (1963), pp. 109–41. Maxime Rodinson,&quot;Bilan des études mohammadiennes&quot;, ''Revue Historique'' 465.1 (1963).    and Richard William Southern,Richard William Southern, ''Western views of Islam in the Middle Ages'' (1978; Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1962). Said argued that Western writings on the Orient, and the perceptions of the East purveyed in them, are suspect, and cannot be taken at face value. According to Said, the history of European colonial rule and political domination over the East distorts the writings of even the most knowledgeable, well-meaning and sympathetic Western ‘Orientalists’ (a term that he transformed into a pejorative):Ian Buruma, [ &quot;Orientalism today is just another form of insult&quot;], ''The Guardian'', 16 June 2008. Accessed 5 January 2010.   Said argued that the West has stereotyped the East in art and literature, since antiquity – such as the composition of ''The Persians'' by Aeschylus.''Orientalism'': pp. 56–57. Even more so in modern times, Europe has dominated Asia politically so that even the most outwardly objective Western texts on the East were permeated with a bias that Western scholars could not recognize. Western scholars appropriated the task of exploration and interpretation of the Orient’s languages, history and culture for themselves, with the implication that the East was not capable of composing its own narrative. They have written Asia’s past and constructed its modern identities from a perspective that takes Europe as the norm, from which the &quot;exotic&quot;, &quot;inscrutable&quot; Orient deviates.''Orientalism'': pp. 38–41.  Said concluded that Western writings about the Orient depict it as an irrational, weak, feminised &quot;Other&quot;, contrasted with the rational, strong, masculine West, a contrast he suggests derives from the need to create &quot;difference&quot; between West and East that can be attributed to immutable &quot;essences&quot; in the Oriental make-up.''Orientalism'': pp. 65–67.  In 1978, when the book was first published, with memories of the Yom Kippur war and the OPEC crisis still fresh, Said argued that these attitudes still permeated the Western media and academia.''Orientalism'': &quot;Afterword,&quot; pp. 329-352. After stating the central thesis, ''Orientalism'' consists mainly of supporting examples from Western texts.  ====Criticism==== ''Orientalism'' and other works by Said sparked a wide variety of controversy and criticism.Martin Kramer, [ &quot;Enough Said (review of Robert Irwin, ''Dangerous Knowledge'')&quot;], March 2007. Retrieved 5 January 2010. Ernest Gellner argued that Said's contention that the West had dominated the East for more than 2,000 years was unsupportable, noting that until the late 17th century the Ottoman Empire had posed a serious threat to Europe.Ernest Gellner, &quot;The Mightier Pen? Edward Said and the Double Standards of Inside-out Colonialism&quot; (rev. of ''Culture and Imperialism'' by Edward Said), ''Times Literary Supplement'', 19 February 1993: pp. 3–4. Mark Proudman notes that Said had claimed that the British Empire extended from Egypt to India in the 1880s, when in fact the Ottoman and Persian Empires intervened.Mark F. Proudman, &quot;[ Disraeli as an Orientalist: The Polemical Errors of Edward Said],&quot; ''Journal of the Historical Society'', 5 December 2005.  Others argued out that even at the height of the imperial era, European power in the East was never absolute, and remained heavily dependent on local collaborators, who were frequently subversive of imperial aims.C.A. Bayly ''Empire and Information'', Delhi: Cambridge UP, 1999: pp. 25, 143, 282. Another criticism is that the areas of the Middle East on which Said had concentrated, including Palestine and Egypt, were poor examples for his theory, as they came under direct European control only for a relatively short period in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. These critics suggested that Said devoted much less attention to more apt examples, including the British Raj in India, and Russia’s dominions in Asia, because Said was more interested in making political points about the Middle East.Robert Irwin ''For Lust of Knowing: The Orientalists and Their Enemies'' (London: Allen Lane, 2006: pp. 159–60, 281-2).  Strong criticism of Said's critique of ''Orientalism'' came from academic Orientalists, including some of Eastern backgrounds. Albert Hourani, Robert Graham Irwin, Nikki Keddie, Bernard Lewis,Bernard Lewis, &quot;The Question of Orientalism&quot;, ''Islam and the West'', London, 1993: pp. 99, 118.Robert Irwin, ''For Lust of Knowing: The Orientalists and Their Enemies'', London: Allen Lane, 2006. and Kanan Makiya addressed what Keddie retrospectively calls &quot;some unfortunate consequences&quot; of Said's ''Orientalism'' on the perception and status of their scholarship.|group=&quot;nb&quot;}} Bernard Lewis in particular was often at odds with Said following the publication of ''Orientalism'', in which Said singled out Lewis as a &quot;perfect exemplification&quot; of an &quot;Establishment Orientalist&quot; whose work &quot;purports to be objective liberal scholarship but is in reality very close to being propaganda ''against'' his subject material&quot;.''Orientalism'': pp. 315  Lewis answered with several essays in response, and was joined by other scholars, such as Maxime Rodinson, Jacques Berque, Malcolm Kerr, Aijaz Ahmad, and William Montgomery Watt, who also regarded ''Orientalism'' as a deeply flawed account of Western scholarship.Aijaz Ahmad, ''In Theory: Classes, Natures, Literatures'', London: Verso, 1992.  Some of Said's academic critics argue that Said made no attempt to distinguish between writers of very different types: such as on the one hand the poet Goethe (who never travelled in the East), the novelist Flaubert (who briefly toured Egypt), Ernest Renan (whose work is widely regarded as tainted by racism), and on the other scholars such as Edward William Lane who was fluent in Arabic.Robert Irwin, [ &quot;Edward Said's shadowy legacy&quot;], ''Times Literary Supplement'', 7 May 2008. Accessed 5 January 2010. According to these critics, their common European origins and attitudes overrode such considerations in Said's mind; Said constructed a stereotype of Europeans.Ibn Warraq, ''Defending the West: A Critique of Edward Said's Orientalism'', 2007. The critic Robert Irwin writes that Said ignored the domination of 19th century Oriental studies by Germans and Hungarians, from countries that did not possess an Eastern empire.Irwin, ''For Lust of Knowing'': pp. 8, 150–166.  Such critics accuse Said of creating a monolithic &quot;Occidentalism&quot; to oppose to the &quot;Orientalism&quot; of Western discourse, arguing that he failed to distinguish between the paradigms of Romanticism and the Enlightenment; that he ignored the widespread and fundamental differences of opinion among western scholars of the Orient; that he failed to acknowledge that many Orientalists (such as William Jones) were more concerned with establishing kinship between East and West than with creating &quot;difference&quot;, and who had often made discoveries that would provide the foundations for anti-colonial nationalism.O.P. Kejariwal, ''The Asiatic Society of Bengal and the Discovery of India’s Past'', Delhi: Oxford UP, 1988: pp. ix-xi, 221–233. More generally, critics argue that Said and his followers fail to distinguish between Orientalism in the media and popular culture (for instance the portrayal of the Orient in such films as ''Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom'') and academic studies of Oriental languages, literature, history and culture by Western scholars (whom, it is argued, they tar with the same brush).Edward Said, &quot;Afterword&quot; to the 1995 ed. of ''Orientalism'': p. 347.Kaizaad Navroze Kotwal, [ &quot;Steven Spielberg's Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom as Virtual Reality: The Orientalist and Colonial Legacies of Gunga Din,&quot;] ''The Film Journal'' no. 12, April 2005.  Said's critics argue that by making ethnicity and cultural background the test of authority and objectivity in studying the Orient, Said drew attention to the question of his own identity as a Palestinian and as a &quot;Subaltern&quot;.Biswamoy Pati, [ &quot;Review: Who Is Afraid of Edward Said?&quot;]. ''Social Scientist'', Vol. 27. No. 9/10 (Sept.–Oct. 1999), pp. 79. Given Said's largely Anglophone upbringing and education at an elite school in Cairo, the fact that he spent most of his adult life in the United States, and his prominent position in American academia, his own arguments that &quot;any and all representations … are embedded first in the language and then in the culture, institutions and political ambience of the representer … [and are] interwoven with a great many other things besides the 'truth', which is itself a representation&quot;''Orientalism'': p. 272 could be said to disenfranchise him from writing about the Orient himself. Hence these critics claim that the excessive relativism of Said and his followers trap them in a &quot;web of solipsism&quot;,D.A. Washbrook, &quot;Orients and Occidents: Colonial Discourse Theory and the Historiography of the British Empire&quot;, in ''Historiography'', vol. 5 of ''The Oxford History of the British Empire'' 607.  unable to talk of anything but &quot;representations&quot;, and denying the existence of ''any'' objective truth.  ====Supporters==== Said’s supporters argue that such criticisms, even if correct, do not invalidate his basic thesis, which they say still holds true for the 19th and 20th centuries and in particular for general representations of the Orient in Western media, literature and film.Terry Eagleton, [ ''Eastern Block'' (book review of Robert Irwin's ''For Lust of Knowing'')], ''New Statesman'', 13 February 2006. His supporters point out that Said himself acknowledges limitations of his study's failing to address German scholarship''Orientalism'', pp: 18–19 and that, in the &quot;Afterword&quot; to the 1995 edition of ''Orientalism'', he, in their view, convincingly refutes his critics, such as Lewis.''Orientalism'': pp. 329–54 ''Orientalism'' is regarded as central to the postcolonial movement, encouraging scholars &quot;from non-western countries…to take advantage of the mood of political correctness it helped to engender by associating themselves with 'narratives of oppression,' creating successful careers out of transmitting, interpreting and debating representations of the non-western 'other.'&quot;Malise Ruthven, [ &quot;Obituary: Edward Said&quot;], ''The Guardian'', 26 September 2003.  Said's importance in the fields of literary criticism and cultural studies is represented by his influence on scholars studying India, such as Gyan Prakash,Gyan Prakash, “Writing Post-Orientalist Histories of the Third World: Perspectives from Indian Historiography,” ''Comparative Studies in Society and History'' 32.2 (1990): 383–408. Nicholas Dirks,Nicholas Dirks, ''Castes of Mind'', Princeton: Princeton UP, 2001. and Ronald Inden,Ronald Inden, ''Imagining India'', New York: Oxford UP, 1990. and Cambodia, such as Simon Springer,Simon Springer, “Culture of violence or violent Orientalism? Neoliberalisation and imagining the ‘savage other’ in post-transitional Cambodia,” ''Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers'' 34.3 (2009): 305–319. and literary theorists such as Hamid Dabashi, Homi BhabhaHomi K. Bhaba, ''Nation and Narration'', New York &amp; London: Routledge, Chapman &amp; Hall, 1990. and Gayatri Spivak.Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, ''In Other Worlds: Essays in Cultural Politics'', London: Methuen, 1987. His work continues to be widely discussed in academic seminars, disciplinary conferences, and scholarship.  ===Influence=== Both supporters and critics of Edward Said acknowledge the profound, transformative influence that his book ''Orientalism'' has had across the spectrum of the humanities. But whereas his critics regret his influence as limiting,Martin Kramer. Ivory Towers on Sand. his supporters praise his influence as liberating.Andrew N. Rubin, &quot;Techniques of Trouble: Edward Said and the Dialectics of Cultural Philology,&quot; The South Atlantic Quarterly, 102.4 (2003): 862-876. Postcolonial theory, of which Said is regarded as a founder and a figure of continual relevance, continues to attract interest and is a thriving field in the humanities.Emory University, Department of English, [ Introduction to Postcolonial Studies] ''Orientalism'' continues to profoundly inform the field of Middle Eastern studies. He was a prominent public intellectual in the United States, praised widely as an &quot;intellectual superstar,&quot; engaging in music criticism, public lectures, media punditry, contemporary politics, and musical performance. His breadth of influence is regarded as &quot;genuinely global,&quot; resting on his unique and innovative blend of cultural criticism, politics, and literary theory.  Barack Obama was among Said's students when Obama was an undergraduate at Columbia in the early 1980s.D'Souza, Dinesh, [ &quot;How Obama Thinks&quot;], ''Forbes'' magazine, 9.27.10. Cited in Michael D. Shear, [ &quot;Gingrich: President Exhibits ‘Kenyan, Anticolonial Behavior’&quot;], ''The New York Times'' &quot;Caucus&quot; blog, September 13, 2010, 10:02 am. Retrieved 2010-09-13. In May 1998, then Illinois state senator Obama and his wife Michelle sat with Said and his wife at an Arab community event in Chicago at which Said gave the keynote speech. The report in which the Chicago event was included discussed the politician's efforts to address the Palestinian cause, though the writer's dominant theme—in 2007—was that Obama had adopted the Israeli cause and neglected the Palestinian one.Abunimah, Ali, [ &quot;How Barack Obama learned to love Israel&quot;], ''The Electronic Intifada'', 4 March 2007.  Caption to image &quot;from archives of Ali Abunimah.&quot; Retrieved 2010-09-24.  ==Music== Being not only an avid music lover, but also an accomplished pianist,Encyclopædia Britannica Online, [ ''Edward Said''], accessed 3 January 2010. Said wrote extensively about music, including being the music critic for ''The Nation'' for several years,Bloomsbury Publishing, ''A Note on the Author''; Power, Politics and Culture; 2004. and writing three books on music: ''Musical Elaborations'', ''Parallels and Paradoxes: Explorations in Music and Society'' (with the Argentine-Israeli conductor Daniel Barenboim), and his last book, ''On Late Style: Music and Literature Against the Grain''. In music, Said often saw a reflection of his ideas on literature and history, and he would find real life possibilities in bold composition and performance. A posthumous collection of essays was published in 2007 by Columbia University Press, entitled ''Music at the Limits''.Ranjan Ghosh, [ ''Edward Said and the Literary, Social, and Political World''], New York: Routledge, 2009: p. 22.Columbia University Press, [ ''Music at the Limits'' by Edward W. Said''], accessed 5 January 2010.  The music of Arab American composer Mohammed Fairouz has been deeply influenced by the writings of Said. Fairouz's First Symphony references the essay ''Homage to a Belly Dancer'' and his Piano Sonata is titled ''Reflections on Exile'' after the collection of essays by Said.Rase, Sherri (April 8, 2011), [ Conversations—with Mohammed Fairouz], ''[Q]onStage'', retrieved 2011-04-19  The [[West-Eastern Divan Orchestra conducted by Daniel Barenboim]]  In 1999, Said jointly founded the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra with Barenboim. The award-winning youth orchestra is made up of musicians from Israel, Palestine, and the surrounding Arab countries, and has performed internationally, including within both Israel and Palestine. Said and Barenboim also worked together to establish The Barenboim-Said Foundation in Seville. The government-funded foundation was eventually constituted in 2004 with its purpose being to develop several &quot;education through music&quot; projects. In addition to managing the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra, the Barenboim-Said Foundation assists with other projects such as the Academy of Orchestral Studies, the Musical Education in Palestine project and the Early Childhood Musical Education Project in Seville.Barenboim-Said Foundation, [ official website], Barenboim-Said.org. Accessed 4 January 2010.  ==Politics== ===Pro-Palestinian activism=== Throughout his adult life, Said involved himself in the effort for Palestinians statehood. From 1977 until 1991, he was an independent member of the Palestinian National Council.Malise Ruthven, [ &quot;Edward Said: Controversial Literary Critic and Bold Advocate of the Palestinian Cause in America,&quot;] ''The Guardian'' September 26, 2003, accessed March 1, 2006. He was also an early proponent of a two-state solution and, in 1988, voted for the establishment of the State of Palestine at a Palestinian National Council meeting in Algiers. In 1991, he quit the PNC in protest over the process leading up to the signing of the Oslo Accords, feeling that the terms of the accord were unacceptable and had been rejected by the Madrid round negotiators. He felt that Oslo would not lead to a truly independent state and was inferior to a plan Yasir Arafat had rejected when Said himself presented it to Arafat on behalf of the US government in the late 1970s.Edward Said, [ &quot;The Morning After&quot;]. ''London Review of Books'' Vol. 15 No. 20. 21 October 1993. In particular, he wrote that Arafat had sold short the right of Palestinian refugees to return to their homes in pre-1967 Israel and ignored the growing presence of Israeli settlements. Said's relationship with the Palestinian Authority was once so bad in 1995 that PA leaders banned the sale of his books,Michael Wood, [ &quot;On Edward Said&quot;], ''London Review of Books'', 23 October 2003, accessed 5 January 2010. but improved when he hailed Arafat for rejecting Ehud Barak's offers at the Camp David 2000 Summit.Edward Said, [ &quot;The price of Camp David&quot;], ''Al Ahram Weekly'', 23 July 2001. Accessed 5 January 2010.  In an article entitled ''Zionism from the Standpoint of its Victims'', he argued for the legitimacy and authenticity of both the Zionist claim to a land (and, more importantly, the Zionist claim that the Jewish people needed a homeland) and Palestinian rights of self-determination.Edward Said, &quot;Zionism from the Standpoint of Its Victims&quot; (1979). In ''The Edward Said Reader'', Vintage Books, 2000, pp. 114-168. Said's books on the issue of Israel and the Palestinians include ''The Question of Palestine'' (1979), ''The Politics of Dispossession'' (1994) and ''The End of the Peace Process'' (2000).    A photograph taken on July 3, 2000, of Said in South Lebanon throwing a stone across the Lebanon-Israel border drew criticism from some political and media commentators, some of whom decried the act as &quot;terrorist sympathizing.&quot;.Julian Vigo, &quot;Edward Said and the Politics of Peace: From Orientalisms to Terrorology,&quot; A Journal of Contemporary Thought, (2004): pp. 43-65. Said explained the act as a stone-throwing contest with his son, and called it a ''symbolic gesture of joy'' at the end of Israel's occupation of Lebanon. &quot;It was a pebble. There was nobody there. The guardhouse was at least half a mile away.&quot;Dinitia Smith, [ ''A Stone's Throw is a Freudian Slip''], The New York Times, 10 March 2001. Although he denied aiming the rock at anyone, an eyewitness account in the Lebanese newspaper ''As-Safir'' asserted that Said had been less than  from Israeli soldiers manning a two-story watchtower when he aimed the rock over the border fence, though it instead hit barbed-wire.Sunnie Kim, [ ''Edward Said Accused of Stoning in South Lebanon''], Columbia Spectator, 19 July 2000. While the photo provoked criticism from some Columbia University faculty members, some students, and from the Anti-Defamation League of B'nai B'rith, the Columbia provost issued a five-page letter defending Said's act on the grounds of freedom of expression: &quot;To my knowledge, the stone was directed at no one; no law was broken; no indictment was made; no criminal or civil action has been taken against Professor Said.&quot; Said said that there were repercussions, however, noting that in February 2001 the Freud Society of Vienna cancelled an invitation for him to give a lecture.Edward Said and David Barsamian, ''Culture and Resistance-Conversations with Edward Said'', South End Press, 2003: pp. 85-86 The president of the Freud Society cited &quot;the political situation in the Middle East and its consequences&quot; as a reason, going on to explain that anti-Semitism &quot;has become more dangerous&quot; in Austrian politics and that the Society had decided on the cancellation &quot;to avoid an internal clash.&quot;  Said made a documentary film about Palestine for BBC named ''In Search of Palestine''.[ BFI | Film &amp; TV Database | IN SEARCH OF PALESTINE (1998)] BBC was unsuccessful in getting it on U.S. television.[ Culture and resistance: conversations with Edward W. Said] By Edward W. Said, David Barsamian, P.57  In ''Culture and Resistance'' (2003), Said likened his situation to that of Noam Chomsky: &quot;It's very similar to him. He's a well known, great linguist. He's been celebrated and honored for that. But he's also vilified as an anti-Semite and a Hitler worshiper.&quot; Said went on to explain:   In 2003, Said, along with Haidar Abdel-Shafi, Ibrahim Dakak, and Mustafa Barghouti, helped establish the Palestinian National Initiative, or ''Al-Mubadara'', an attempt to build a third force in Palestinian politics, a democratic, reformist alternative to Fatah and Hamas. Three years later, in January 2006, anthropologist David Price obtained 147 pages of Said's 238-page FBI file through a Freedom of Information Act request. The records reveal that Said was under FBI surveillance as early as 1971. No records were available on the last dozen years of his life.David Price, [ &quot;How the FBI Spied on Edward Said,&quot;] ''CounterPunch'' January 13, 2006, accessed January 15, 2006.  ===Criticism of US foreign policy=== In a 1997 revised edition of his book ''Covering Islam'', Said criticized what he viewed as the biased reporting of the Western press and, in particular, media “speculations about the latest conspiracy to blow up buildings, sabotage commercial airliners, and poison water supplies.”Martin Kramer, [ ''Enough Said (review of Robert Irwin, Dangerous Knowledge)''], March 2007.  Said opposed many US foreign policy endeavors in the Middle East and elsewhere. He critiqued US involvement in Kosovo and Iraq under President Clinton, and US support for Israel was a constant topic that he addressed in his activism. Although growing increasingly weak from his battle with leukemia, Said spent many of his last months speaking out against the then recent invasion of Iraq.Democracy Now!, [ &quot;Syrian Expert Patrick Seale and Columbia University Professor Edward Said Discuss the State of the Middle East After the Invasion of Iraq&quot;], DemocracyNow.org, 15 April 2003. Accessed 4 January 2010. In an April 2003 interview with ''Al-Ahram Weekly'', Said argued that the Iraq War was ill-conceived:   ==Death and tributes== al-Mubadara memorial poster of Edward Said on the Israeli West Bank wall.]] Edward Said died at age 67 in the early morning of September 25, 2003, in New York City, after a 12 year-long battle with chronic lymphocytic leukemia.Columbia News, [ ''Columbia Community Mourns Passing of Edward Said''], 23 September 2003 He was survived by his wife of 33 years, Mariam (née Cortas); a son, Wadie, and a daughter, Najla.Mark Feeney, [ ''Edward Said, critic, scholar, Palestinian advocate; at 67''], ''The Boston Globe'', 26 September 2003.Malise Ruthven, ''[ Obituary-Edward Said]'', ''The Guardian'', 26 September 2003. Accessed 14 January 2010.  Subsequently, several prominent writers published elegies for Said, including Alexander Cockburn,Alexander Cockburn, [ &quot;A Mighty and Passionate Heart&quot;], ''Counterpunch'' Christopher Hitchens,Christopher Hitchens, [ &quot;Where the Twain Should Have Met&quot;] ''The Atlantic Monthly'', September 2003 Tony Judt,Tony Judt, [ &quot;The Rootless Cosmopolitan&quot;], ''The Nation'' Michael Wood,Michael Wood, [ ''On Edward Said''], ''London Review of Books'', 23 October 2003, accessed 5 January 2010. and Tariq Ali.Tariq Ali, [ &quot;Remembering Edward Said (1935-2003)&quot;], ''The New Left Review''  In November 2004, Birzeit University renamed its music school as the Edward Said National Conservatory of Music in Said's honor.Birzeit University, [ ''Edward Said National Conservatory of Music''].  In 2008, Verso Books published ''Waiting for the Barbarians: A Tribute to Edward W. Said'', a book of essays by 15 authors, including Akeel Bilgrami, Rashid Khalidi and Elias Khoury. The book was edited by Müge Gürsoy Sökmen and Bașak Ertür.[ &quot;Conference: Waiting for the Barbarians: A Tribute to Edward Said.&quot;] 25–26 May 2007. Bogazici University. ''European Journal of Turkish Studies''. Ejts.org. Accessed 5 January 2010.Jorgen Jensehausen, [ &quot;Review: 'Waiting for the Barbarians.'&quot;] ''Journal of Peace Research'' Vol. 46 No. 3 May 2009. Accessed 5 January 2010.  A critical memoir, ''Edward Said: the charisma of criticism,'' by H. Aram Veeser was published by Routledge in March 2010.  In August 2010, the University of California Press published a large volume of essays by some 29 authors about every aspect of Said's intellectual contributions. Edited by Adel Iskandar and Hakem Rustom, ''Edward Said: A Legacy of Emancipation and Representations'' includes interviews with Noam Chomsky, Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, and Daniel Barenboim, as well as the writings of Joseph Massad, Jacqueline Rose, Avi Shlaim, Ilan Pappe, Ella Shohat, Asha Varadhjan, RR Radhakrishnan, Ardi Imseis, Ghada Karmi, Sabry Hafez and many others.  ===Edward Said memorial lectures===  Since Said's death in 2003, several institutions have instituted annual lecture series in his memory, including Columbia University, University of Warwick, Princeton University, University of Adelaide, American University of Cairo, and Palestine Center, with such notables speaking as Daniel Barenboim, Noam Chomsky, Robert Fisk, and Cornel West.  ==Bibliography==   ==Awards== Besides being honored with memberships and posts to several prestigious organizations and institutions, Said was the recipient of twenty honorary degrees from universities around the world.The English Pen World Atlas, [ &quot;Edward Said&quot;], accessed on 3 January 2010. Said was the recipient of Harvard University's Bowdoin Prize. He received the Lionel Trilling Award (twice), the first occasion being the first time the award was given. He also received the Wellek Prize of the American Comparative Literature Association, and the inaugural Spinoza Lens Award.Spinozalens, [ ''Internationale Spinozaprijs Laureates''], accessed on 3 January 2010. In 2001, Said received the Lannan Literary Award for Lifetime Achievement. In 2002, he received the Prince of Asturias Award for Concord, and he was the first U.S. citizen to receive the Sultan Owais prize.Columbia University Press, &quot;About the Author&quot;, ''Humanism and Democratic Criticism'', 2004. His autobiography, ''Out of Place'', won him the 1999 New Yorker Book Award for Non-Fiction; the 2000 Anisfield-Wolf Book Award for Non-Fiction; and the Morton Dauwen Zabel Award in Literature.The English Pen World Atlas, [ ''Edward Said''], accessed on 3 January 2010. Said Was named an honorary patron of the University Philosophical Society, Trinity College, Dublin in 2003, shortly before his death.  Honorary Degree at [ The International Institute of Social Studies] (ISS): Orientalism once more (2003) / Edward W. Said / The Hague: ISS, 2003. Lecture delivered on the occasion of the awarding of the degree of Doctor Honoris Causa on the 50th anniversary of the Institute of Social Studies, The Hague, The Netherlands, 21 May 2003.  