Edward W. Said, a Columbia University professor and leading spokesman in the United States for the Palestinian cause, has died, his editor at Knopf publishers said Thursday. He was 67. 

Said had suffered from leukemia for years and died at a New York hospital late Wednesday, editor Shelley Wanger said. 

Said was born in 1935 in Jerusalem, then part of British-ruled Palestine, but he spent most of his adult life in the United States. He wrote passionately about the Palestinian cause but also on a variety of other subjects, from English literature, his academic specialty, to music and culture. 

When it came to the Arab-Israeli conflict, Said was consistently critical of Israel for what he regarded as mistreatment of the Palestinians.

He wrote two years ago after visits to Jerusalem and the West Bank that Israel's "efforts toward exclusivity and xenophobia toward the Arabs'' had actually strengthened Palestinian determination.

"Palestine and Palestinians remain, despite Israel's concerted efforts from the beginning either to get rid of them or to circumscribe them so much as to make them ineffective,'' Said wrote in the English-language Al-Ahram Weekly, published in Cairo.

In 2000, he prompted a controversy when he threw a rock toward an Israeli guardhouse on the Lebanese border. Columbia University did not censure him, saying that the stone was directed at no one, no law was broken and that his actions were protected by principles of academic freedom.

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Said moved to the United States as a student. He received a bachelor's degree from Princeton in 1957 and a master's and Ph.D. from Harvard, in 1960 and 1964.

Most of his academic career was spent as a professor at Columbia University in New York, but he also was a visiting professor at such leading institutions as Yale, Harvard and Johns Hopkins.

His books include "The Question of Palestine'' in 1979 and "After the Last Sky'' in 1986.

Source: Guardian

Remembering Edward Said

We mourn with greatest sadness the death today of Professor Edward W. Said. We extend our deepest sympathy and condolences to Edward Said's family, and we share our profound sense of loss with the many and diverse communities that loved and respected him.

Professor Said maintained his relentless engagement with people, culture, and politics all over the world, even in the last weeks of his decade-long struggle against illness.

Said is known throughout the world as a public intellectual, and there are few fields of intellectual endeavor that have been untouched by his contributions. A prolific and path-breaking scholar whose contributions helped transform both the humanities and the social sciences, Said's impact and engagement went far beyond the academy. Said was also an activist who worked courageously for justice, and fearlessly spoke truth to power.

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