Ussama Makdisi
Palestinian American historian (born 1968)
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Ussama Makdisi (born 1968)[1] is a Palestinian American historian specializing in the history of the modern Middle East.[2] He is a professor of history at the University of California, Berkeley,[3] where he is also the Chancellor's Chair and was the May Ziadeh Chair in Palestinian and Arab Studies.[4]
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Princeton University (PhD)
- Professor
- author
Ussama Makdisi | |
|---|---|
Makdisi in 2025 | |
| Born | 1968 (age 57–58) Washington, D.C., U.S. |
| Education | Wesleyan University (BA) Princeton University (PhD) |
| Occupations |
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| Spouse | Elora Shehabuddin |
| Parent(s) | Jean Said Makdisi (mother), Samir Makdisi (father) |
| Relatives | Saree Makdisi (brother), Karim Makdisi (brother) |
| Awards | Berlin Prize (2018) |
Early life
Ussama Makdisi was born in 1968 in Washington, D.C.,[5] to professors Jean Said Makdisi and Samir Makdisi, in a family of academics.[6] He is of Palestinian Christian and Lebanese Christian descent. He received a B.A. degree from Wesleyan University in 1990[citation needed] and a Ph.D. in history from Princeton University in 1997.[7]
Academic career
Makdisi's research focuses on Ottoman and Arab history, Arab–American relations, and US missionary work in the Middle East.[5][8]
In 1997, he became the inaugural Arab-American Educational Foundation Chair of Arab Studies at Rice University in Houston, Texas.[3][9] He has also served as a visiting professor at the American University of Beirut and the School of Oriental and African Studies in London.[citation needed]
From 2012 to 2013, he was a resident fellow at the Berlin Institute for Advanced Study.[8] In 2018, he was awarded the Berlin Prize.[10]
He started a podcast, Makdisi Street, with his brothers in November 2023 to "discuss the coverage and framing of the ongoing Israeli bombardment of Gaza."[11]
His name, among 160 students and other faculty, was shared by UC Berkeley with the Trump administration as part of an investigation into alleged antisemitic incidents.[12] He responded in an interview on NPR and another on Occupied Thoughts by Foundation for Middle East Peace, calling the investigation a crackdown on academic freedom reminiscent of McCarthyism.[13][14]
Books
As author
- Age of Coexistence: The Ecumenical Frame and the Making of the Modern Arab World (University of California Press, 2019)
- Faith Misplaced: the Broken Promise of U.S.-Arab Relations, 1820-2001 (PublicAffairs, 2010)
- Artillery of Heaven: American Missionaries and the Failed Conversion of the Middle East (Cornell University Press, 2008)
- The Culture of Sectarianism: Community, History, and Violence in Nineteenth-Century Ottoman Lebanon (University of California Press, 2000)
As co-editor
- (with Paul A. Silverstein) Memory and Violence in the Middle East and North Africa (Indiana University Press, 2006)