Rashid Khalidi

This class was great! Khalidi is extremely knowledgeable and respectful, and his lectures were amazing. The readings are a bit tedious but you learn the most if you do them. He even got the author of one of our assigned books, Abrahamian, to give a guest lecture! My one critique of this class: your experience will heavily depend on your TA. Mine really sucked, she was a very harsh grader who expected us to keep up with her French writing standards. Other sections had TAs who were more understanding and fair graders, though. Other than that the class was one of my favs.

Overall, pretty solid class; not the easiest, but a doable A with lots of time and effort. This is a super popular class because it fulfills the Global Core requirement, Prof. Khalidi is the best in his field, and the subject matter is relevant and important to current affairs. It's such a big class that you'll likely have a couple, if not 10-15 friends in the class too. Professor Khalidi is an awesome lecturer. I found his lectures engaging and extremely informative. It was refreshing to learn about the Middle East from an actual Middle Eastern professor/someone who's lived there – he throws in personal anecdotes about famous heads of state and events we learn about, like meeting King Faisal of Saudi Arabia and his fathers' work in the UN. It's pretty cool to learn from someone whose own life experiences and family background is ingrained in what we're learning. Grading is entirely based on discussion sections that happen once a week. The midterm and final are each two papers written over a five-day period – so they're definitely very time intensive and require prior knowledge (cramming during the five days is hard – I tried doing that for the midterm and got a B+). If you do the readings, pay attention to lectures, and talk to your TA, you should be okay. Make sure to participate in your discussion sections. I ended up with an A overall in this class, although it did take a…

HISTW4705, CONSTITUTION AND DEMOCRACY IN THE MIDDLE EAST Professor Khalidi's teaching method is excellent. He was organized with his discussion of the material, and he struck a balance between lecturing on context, discussing the readings, and engaging his students. He never failed to answer our questions completely, and always addressed any comments or concerns we had. Professor Khalidi was very clear about the assignments from the beginning of the semester, and the syllabus was straightforward: class participation, one 25 page paper, it outline, and a presentation. Professor Khalidi organized the presentation schedule very early in the semester, and let us know all the due dates by the 2nd week of class. It was also very nice of him to remind us to work on our outlines and papers through out the semester. In my opinion, there are not any significant ways that this class could improve. The overall quality of the class depends on three things: the professor, the group of students, and the readings. As I've already covered, Professor Khalidi was excellent. As it is a seminar reserved for seniors, the students were engaged. As for the readings, they were clearly chosen with great care and were relevant as well as enlightening. I especially appreciated how Professor Khalidi always took a moment to relate the material we were discussing to current events in the Arab world. It was…

A brilliant class from a brilliant man. I have never seen a professor so deftly steer a conversation to include all sides of a debate and all aspects of a problem than Prof. Khalidi in this course. i don't know if he's still teaching it, but if so, take it. The books we read were provocative and interesting, and Khalidi cracked them open with ease. The only problem I had with his class was his reliance on student presentations - a common tactic in high level history seminars - which I hate in all forms. What do I care what you have to say? I dont - but I do like listening to Khalidi. Take this class.

Aimed at students with prior knowledge of the MENA region and an interest in a wide variety of methodologies within Middle Eastern history. 1 Columbia University: Arts & Sciences Spring 2021 Course: HISTGR8757_001_2021_1-METHODSINMIDDLEEASTHISTORY : HISTGR8757_001_2021_1 - METHODS IN MIDDLE EAST HISTORY Instructor: Rashid Khalidi

The course was extremely interesting, the professor handled lecture so respectfully and with no biases, esp with everything going on, he was extremely cautious. at the end of the semester we all have a big round of applause because we all thoroughly enjoyed it. I loved this class, and have learned so much. I will forever be grateful for the amount of history I learned. also KATE REEVE is and AMAZING TA. she is the best.

I think this course is really overrated. The lectures were really poorly organized. Perhaps, this was because of the online format but Khalidi lectures without a PowerPoint and wasn't writing on a board or anything, so it was not super coherent. He would lay out what he was going to say at the beginning of the class, but often he wouldn't follow it or would jump back and forth between topics. Khalidi's family is clearly very important in the Middle East, but some of his anecdotes about his family history came off a bit like brags (he talked about how he was brought to see the king of Saudi as a teenager when he was about to go to Yale for no apparent reason). The readings were quite uninteresting and for the most part very textbook-y. There was also a strangely (considering Khalidi's politics) biased pro-Israel history of Israel text. We also read the entirety of his book on the Cold War which was really badly written (he quotes the same passage twice in 20 pages) and he often quoted his own book when discussing this topic. I agree with the other review that said this is not a comprehensive history of the Middle East class, we barely talked about pan-Arabism, north Africa, or countries apart from Turkey/the Ottoman Empire, Egypt, Iran, Israel/Palestine, and Saudi at the end. Another thing I did not like about the class was the grading. It was 20% Section Participation (Based o…

Fair amount of reading for a senior seminar; one 25 pg paper due; one in class presentation where you led the discussion on the readings; the outline of the paper is due first week of March. Very fair

Professor Khalidi is an academic superstar and one of the world's leading modern Middle Eastern historians. Take advantage of his arrival at Columbia and take any class you can with him- there is no better professor to engage with on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Arab nationalism or Middle Eastern history. His seminar explored how history is written cross-culturally and had a remarkable book list. We explored Said's Orientalism, various historians/anthropologists who engage in the power/knowledge discourse and the perceptions of 'others' throughout history. Most of the course was student presentations, which fluctuated between well prepared and enlightening conversations as well as some disappointing let downs, a result of poor student preperation. Khalidi's perspective is remarkable, and his academic integrity is first class. Not one divisive issue was polemicized, and all topics were subject to rigorous academic debate. Regardless of his outside engagements and responsibilities, Khalidi made himself available at office hours and was extremely helpful and friendly on an array of issues. He is a passionate intellectual and a first class professor, and we could all use a little of his scholarship to get to the heart of the mess we find ourselves in when it comes to that region of the world.

Amazing professor. Go to his office hours!!! Incredibly intelligent. Great lectures. One thing: covers a ton. You won't be able to go that in depth. But you'll get a taste of a lot. Readings were interesting and only as long as necessary (apparently he updated the list to be less this year). Midterm and final were actually fine, just papers that you get to write with a limited amount of time. One thing, my TA kinda sucked. Was very bad at leading discussions. But also everyone got an A on their assignments. Your final grade basically depends on your TA.