Edward Said and the Question of Palestine

Throughline

NPR

Society & Culture, History, Documentary

4.7 • 15K Ratings

🗓️ 17 July 2025

⏱️ 55 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Edward Said brought the question of Palestine into the American mainstream. He taught at Columbia University for nearly 40 years, and today, more than two decades after his death, pro-Palestine student protesters on that campus and others have invoked his name. Meanwhile, his interviews circulate on social media and his books are taught at universities around the world. On this episode: the story of the man who pushed for recognition of the Palestinian perspective, the pushback he faced, and the dangers he foresaw.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Support for NPR comes from NPR member stations and Eric and Wendy Schmidt through the Schmidt Family Foundation, working toward a healthy, resilient, secure world for all.
0:11.5	On the web at theshmit.org.
0:14.8	Imagine it's the year 1982.
0:17.6	You've just turned on the TV. You're flipping through channels.
0:22.3	And then this generic Arabian melody catches your ear.
0:26.9	So you linger.
0:29.3	A grainy black and white video shows a man flying across the screen on a floating carpet.
0:35.6	Suddenly, it cuts to a belly dancer bedazzled and red and yellow sequins,
0:40.6	spinning around as a sheer orange scarf envelops her.
0:45.0	Cut again.
0:46.3	A forlorn face hunched over in a dark black shroud, only one eye peering out.
0:52.5	Cut.
0:53.5	A man in a white turban with furrowed brows,
0:56.3	stares intensely, angrily, back at you.
1:00.6	And then, as this visual collage continues,
1:03.6	you hear a voice.
1:04.4	The Orient, the mysterious east,
1:08.5	a place of fantasy, imagination, desire.
1:13.2	The voice belongs to a man named Edward Saeed,
1:16.1	and he's narrating this documentary on PBS called The Shadow of the West.
1:23.6	Saeed was himself from the so-called Orient, the Middle East.
1:28.3	I was born in Jerusalem when it was part of a country called Palestine.
	...

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