Edward Said

Edward Said was a Palestinian and American academic, literary critic and political activist, born in Jerusalem under the British Mandate, who taught at Columbia University from 1963 until 2003. His book Orientalism (1978), a critique of how the Western world has represented the Orient, made him one of the founders of post-colonial studies; Culture and Imperialism followed in 1993. A member of the Palestinian National Council, he resigned in 1993 over his criticism of the Oslo Accords, and in 1999 argued that lasting peace was possible only in one Israeli–Palestinian state. That year he co-founded the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra with Barenboim. He died of leukemia in New York City in 2003.