Said '57, noted Palestinian advocate, dies at age 67

Princeton alumnus Edward Said '57, one of the country's most ardent advocates of Palestinian causes and a distinguished scholar of comparative literature and cultural studies at Columbia University, died Thursday at age 67. He had leukemia and was living on the Upper West Side of New York City.

He is survived by his wife, Mariam Cortas, and his children, Wadie and Najla, both of whom went to Princeton.

Said, who received his doctorate at Harvard, was born in Jerusalem and came to the United States as a teenager. His most noted books were "Culture and Imperialism" and "Orientalism," in which he slams Western intellectual approaches to studying the Middle East and North Africa as politically-motivated and based off false stereotypes.

But Said became equally known for his own political activism on behalf of Palestinians. He was a vocal critic of U.S. and Israeli policy toward Palestinian areas and a major advocate of a Palestinian state.

He was a supporter of Yasir Arafat, the Palestinian leader, and was said to have convinced him to support Israel's right to exist to facilitate the Middle East peace process.

Said, who spoke Arabic and English, repudiated terrorism, though he harshly characterized Israel's treatment of Palestinians in disputed territories.

He was most known in academic circles for "Orientalism," the 1978 book that argued that "every European, in what he could say about the Orient, was a racist, an imperialist, and almost totally ethnocentric."

Said has published more than 20 other books.

He has visited his alma mater from time to time, though he hasn't been an omnipresent figure, and he stopped by to lecture in April 2001. — DAILY PRINCETONIAN STAFF