Edward W. Said

Edward W. Said, was Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University for most of his academic career. He was born in 1935 in Jerusalem, then part of British-ruled Palestine. He was educated at Victoria College in Cairo, before moving to the United States to study at Mount Hermon School in Massachusetts, at Princeton and at Harvard University. For many years he was the leading US advocate for the Palestinian cause and his most influential book, Orientalism (1978), was credited with forcing Westerners to re-examine their perceptions of the Islamic world.