A man of great intellect and courage, Edward Said (1935-2003) taught English and comparative literature at Columbia University. This Palestinian writer and activist was widely respected for his innovative research in comparative literature and his incisive political commentary. In addition, he wrote classical music criticism for The Nation and political commentary for publications such as The Guardian, Le Monde Diplomatique and al-Hayat, the Arabic-language daily newspaper, printed in all the Arab capitals of the world. to Jerusalem, and emigrated with his family (1948) to Cairo, around the same time that Israel declared its independence and the Arab-Israeli war began. The family moved (1950) to New York so he could attend college. Subsequently, Said studied at Princeton and Harvard, where he received his doctorate. in 1964. Most of his academic career was spent in New York as a professor at Columbia, but he was also a visiting professor at many major universities. Like Noam Chomsky, he became an intellectual of the first order. Both activists more or less see the public role of the intellectual in terms of outsider, dilettante and disturber of the status quo. Both criticize the media as obstacles to understanding what governments actually do behind closed doors, thus promoting a sense of resistance. He has lectured at more than 150 universities and colleges in the United States, Canada and Europe. Because of his advocacy for Palestinian self-determination and his membership in the Palestinian National Council, he was only recently allowed to visit Palestine. Said published many important books, including Orientalism (1978), a critique of the Eurocentrism that had come to characterize the East. ... half of the document ... to politics, oil economics and the naive dichotomy between the freedom-loving democratic Israel and the evil, totalitarian, terrorist Arabs, establishing a clear vision of the Near East has become difficult. My experiences in these topics led me to write this. The life of a Palestinian Arab in the West is quite daunting, as the web of racism, cultural stereotypes, political imperialism and so on is very strong. The nexus of knowledge and power that creates "the Oriental" and in a certain sense consecrates him as a human being is not (for me) an exclusively academic question. I was able to make use of my humanistic and political concern for the development and consolidation of Orientalism (p. 52). Works Cited Said, Edward W. 1978. “Orientalism.” In Cultural Studies: An Introductory Reader, ed. Ann Gray and Jim McGuigan. London: Arnold, 1997, pp. 42-53.