Events

On Sunday, April 5, 2009 at 7:30pm, Meretz USA will be co-sponsoring Rashid Khalidi's book talk at  Congregation Beth Elohim in Park Slope, Brooklyn. 

His new book entitled "Sowing Crisis: The Cold War and American Dominance in the Middle East" will be discussed by Khalidi.  Copies will be available to purchase at the talk and there will be a suggested contribution $5 at the door. 

For directions to Congregation Beth Elohim please click here.

And to learn more about Khakidi and his new book please read the bios below.

About Rashid Khalidi's Book:
Sowing Crisis
The Cold War and American Dominance in the Middle East

A lucid and provocative analysis of the legacy of the Cold War in the Middle East

From "the foremost U.S. historian of the modern Middle East" [L.A. Times] comes a powerful argument that the global conflicts now playing out explosively in the Middle East were significantly shaped by the Cold War era, and that any successful peace process must begin with a thorough understanding of this historical foundation.

In his new book, Rashid Khalidi dissects the crucial dynamics of power in the Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union as it played out in the Middle East, compellingly arguing that the intense rivalry between the U.S. and the USSR in the region set the stage for the tragic conflicts that have followed in its long wake.

Understanding the powerful and lingering aftereffects of the Cold War requires going back in time and reassessing that conflict. The perceived Soviet threat was the pretext for the establishment of U.S. military bases and for the development of a vastly enhanced American international intelligence network, for example. The strategies the United States adopted in the Cold War have, in fact, led directly to its prevailing policies and to the "hot" wars it is waging in the Middle East today. Khalidi argues that, without a critical analysis of the legacy of the Cold War in the current political climate of the Middle East, the cycle will continue onward, without hope of a lasting peace.

About Rashid Khalidi:

Rashid Khalidi is the Edward Said Professor of Arab Studies at Columbia University. He taught at the University of Chicago from 1987 until 2003. Previously, he taught at the Lebanese University and the American University of Beirut from 1974 to 1983, and at Georgetown and Columbia universities from 1983 until 1987. He received a B.A. in History from Yale University in 1970 and a D. Phil. in Modern History from Oxford University in 1974.

Khalidi is editor of the Journal of Palestine Studies, and he was President of the Middle East Studies Association, and an advisor to the Palestinian delegation to the Madrid and Washington Arab-Israeli peace negotiations from October 1991 until June 1993. He has received fellowships and grants from the Ford Foundation, the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, the American Research Center in Egypt, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, and the Rockefeller Foundation, and was recipient of a Fulbright research award.

Rashid Khalidi's most recent books, both published by Beacon Press, are The Iron Cage: The Story of the Palestinian Struggle for Statehood (2006) and Resurrecting Empire: Western Footprints and America's Perilous Path in the Middle East (2004). His Palestinian Identity: The Construction of Modern National Consciousness, published by Columbia University Press, was a co-winner of the Middle East Studies Association's Albert Hourani Prize as the best book of 1997. Additionally, he is the author of British Policy Towards Syria and Palestine, 1906-1914 (1980) and Under Siege: PLO Decision-Making During the 1982 War (1986), and was the co-editor of Palestine and the Gulf (1982) and The Origins of Arab Nationalism (1991).

He has written over a hundred scholarly articles on aspects of Middle East history and politics, as well as pieces in The New York Times, The Financial Times, The Boston Globe, The Los Angeles Times, The Chicago Tribune and The Nation. Dr. Khalidi has been a guest on numerous radio and TV shows including All Things Considered, Talk of the Nation, Morning Edition, News Hour with Jim Lehrer, The Charlie Rose Show, and Nightline, and on the BBC, Radio France Inter, the CBC and the Voice of America.