khalidi unplugged
Last week I had the pleasure of hearing Rashid Khalidi speak about his new book The Iron Cage: The Story of the Palestinian Struggle for Statehood, in which he tackles the fraught question of why the Palestinian national movement(s), both in the Mandate era and post-Nakba, has found it so difficult to create viable "structures of state." Khalidi is not only a gifted historian (and a fellow Antonian, did his DPhil there)--he was an observer with the Jordanian-Palestinian negotiation team at the 1991 Madrid talks. So his perspective, which balances an impassioned defense of the Palestinian cause with an unsparing critique of its failings, is well worth listening to. And now you can do just that, since an mp3 of the talk and following Q&A is now available online here.
I recommend it not only for the background on the book, but for Khalidi's lively discussion of a number of other issues--the Iraq war, intimations of confrontation with Iran, the beleaguered two-state solution, the Lebanon war, the "Israel lobby" brouhaha, and many other things. (Later that same day he participated in this LRB-hosted panel on the Israel Lobby affair with Tony Judt among others; I haven't watched the video yet but I bet it's worthwhile).
Anyway, I was very impressed by Khalidi in person--he was fierce and well-spoken and rather bleakly funny. On the whole, a very effective public speaker, much given to reeling off emphatic lists of parallel facts and factors, and always in well-structured sentences without the "um"s and "er"s that undo so many hapless lecturers. I found myself thinking it appropriate that he's the Said Chair at Columbia now, because more than any other, he seems the most able to take up Said's mantle as the most eloquent and effective proponent of the Palestinian perspective in this country. Except he does sometimes forget he's not talking to a scholarly audience--he kept referring to velayet-e faqih without saying what it meant, and I had to lean over an explain quietly to a friend. But then, it's nice to hear from someone who expects his audience to keep up.
I recommend it not only for the background on the book, but for Khalidi's lively discussion of a number of other issues--the Iraq war, intimations of confrontation with Iran, the beleaguered two-state solution, the Lebanon war, the "Israel lobby" brouhaha, and many other things. (Later that same day he participated in this LRB-hosted panel on the Israel Lobby affair with Tony Judt among others; I haven't watched the video yet but I bet it's worthwhile).
Anyway, I was very impressed by Khalidi in person--he was fierce and well-spoken and rather bleakly funny. On the whole, a very effective public speaker, much given to reeling off emphatic lists of parallel facts and factors, and always in well-structured sentences without the "um"s and "er"s that undo so many hapless lecturers. I found myself thinking it appropriate that he's the Said Chair at Columbia now, because more than any other, he seems the most able to take up Said's mantle as the most eloquent and effective proponent of the Palestinian perspective in this country. Except he does sometimes forget he's not talking to a scholarly audience--he kept referring to velayet-e faqih without saying what it meant, and I had to lean over an explain quietly to a friend. But then, it's nice to hear from someone who expects his audience to keep up.
posted by kitabet at 8:33 PM
1 Comments:
I was impressed by Khalidi when I heard him speak a few years ago, too. And you're right, it IS appropriate that he has Edward Said's chair now. Thanks for this post - and the explanation of velayet-e faqih - I knew the concept but not the phrase!
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