Joel Beinin
Professor of History
Stanford University
President, Middle East Studies Association
Stanford University
President, Middle East Studies Association
Biographical Statement—The Middle East has always been part of my
life. I began studying Hebrew at the age of seven. My interest in Arab culture was
stimulated by my mother’s memories of her Arab co-workers at the Consolidated
Refineries in Haifa. She and my father left Palestine and returned to the United
States in early 1948. In the mid-1950s my uncle and his family also returned to the
United States from Israel after having founded and lived for several years on
Kibbutz Sasa. Unlike most Jewish settlements established on the sites of Palestinian
villages depopulated or destroyed in the 1948 Arab-Israeli War, Sasa preserved the
original Arab structures and built new ones in the Arab architectural style. My
uncle worked with the crews of Palestinian Arab citizens of Israel who undertook
this construction. He learned Arabic and acquired a taste for Palestinian crafts,
which he imparted to me.
After graduating high school in New Jersey, I went to Israel for six
months. There I began to study Arabic with an Iraqi Jewish member of Kibbutz Mishmar
ha-Emek. My first—very halting—conversations in Arabic with Arabs were during
visits to the nearby village of Umm al-Fahm to urge them to vote for Mapam (The United
Workers’ Party) in the 1965 Israeli elections.
Upon returning home, I abandoned my plan to study engineering at
Rutgers University to pursue Middle East studies. This entailed transferring to
Princeton University, where Avram Udovitch provided much encouragement and support.
Princeton’s strong commitment to Middle East studies, its vast library resources,
and the easy mixing of undergraduates, graduate students, and faculty remain an
academic ideal for me.
I went to Israel again after receiving my B.A. in 1970. After spending
some time on Kibbutz Lahav, I began graduate study at the Hebrew University, where
Amnon Cohen, Yehoshafat Harkabi, Moshe Maoz, and Yehoshua Porath were among my
teachers. The occupation of the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip
influenced much of Israeli Middle East studies. Reuven Kaminer, Vice-Provost of the
School for Overseas Students, was a powerful influence during a turbulent period in
which I reevaluated much of what I thought I knew. I returned to the United States
and finished my M.A. at Harvard University in 1974.
I sought respite from Harvard by moving to Detroit where I worked on
the Arabic section of a monthly newspaper. I spent considerable time in the Arab
community of Dearborn’s South End, where I came to understand something about 20th
century Arab history and politics. These experiences shaped my future doctoral
thesis.
When I returned to graduate school at the University of Michigan, the
late Ernest Abdel-Massih whipped my Arabic into shape and taught me colloquial
Egyptian. My doctoral advisor, the late Richard P. Mitchell, gave me the best bit
of
academic advice I ever received and one of the few I’ve followed. I proposed to
write a dissertation about the formation of the Palestinian Arab working class in
Mandate Palestine. “If you write a dissertation about Israel or Palestine,” he said,
“you won’t get a teaching position. Why not write about Egypt instead?” I did; and
this decision led to lasting relationships with Egyptian trade union leaders like
Taha Sa’d ‘Uthman and intellectuals in and around the labor movement including Yusuf
Darwish, Rif’at al-Sa’id, and Mohammed Sid-Ahmed.
Dick Mitchell supervised a crowd of free spirited doctoral students in
the late 1970s and early 1980s. He nourished us physically, spiritually, and
intellectually and encouraged us to develop in directions that diverged from his own
path while maintaining his connection to us. Geoff Eley, Ronald Suny, Charles Tilly,
and Louise Tilly in the University of Michigan History Department also guided and
supported me.
I received my Ph.D in 1982 and have taught Middle East history at
Stanford University since 1983. Most of what I have done since then is on the public
record and does not need reiteration. I do want to record my enduring debts of
friendship and intellectual companionship to Zachary Lockman and to Joe Stork and
the other members of the Middle East Research and Information Project (publisher of
Middle East Report) who kept me connected to the Middle East and to our common
values.
Stanford University and the History Department in particular have been
scrupulous in defending the academic freedom of a colleague who has often spoken out
about things not well understood in a language not commonly heard. For this I am
most grateful.
