CCAS was honored to host Professor Rashid Khalidi, Edward Said Professor Emeritus of Arab Studies at Columbia University, on October 9, 2025, as the 2025-2026 Kareema Khoury Memorial Lecturer. Dr. Khalidi’s talk, entitled “The Hundred Years’ War on Palestine” (also the title of his most recent book), considered the past century of colonial violence against the indigenous Palestinian people and the historical resistance movements against it. A packed ICC auditorium and hundreds online attended the lecture.
Dr. Khalidi spoke about Israel’s genocide in Gaza over the past two years as a “cataclysmic new phase in a war that has lasted for generations.” “Far from representing a departure,” he said, “what has happened since October 7, 2023, is consistent with decades of Israeli ethnic cleansing, military occupation, attacks on civilians, and theft of Palestinian land.”
Professor Khalidi argued that while this current phase reflects the underlying lineaments in the hundred years’ war, its violent intensity and the scale of loss are unique. “Even if the ferocious carnage of the past two years ends and even if the shift of global public opinion in favor of Palestine continues,” he added, “there seems to be no viable path in the short term toward a just, lasting, sustainable resolution in Palestine, between the Palestinian and Israeli peoples.” For Professor Khalidi, such a just resolution would be based on the decolonial dismantling of entrenched structures of supremacy and discrimination and on justice, equal rights, and mutual recognition.
The Kareema Khoury Memorial Lecture is given in honor of Kareema Khoury, whose family established the event in 1976 to bring eminent scholars of the Arab world to Georgetown for a public lecture.
To watch Professor Khalidi’s lecture in full, including Q&A, please click here.
