Salim Tamari ( ar, سليم تماري; born 1945), is a Palestinian sociologist who is the director of the

Institute of Palestine Studies The Institute for Palestine Studies (IPS) is the oldest independent nonprofit public service research institute in the Arab world. It was established and incorporated in Beirut, Lebanon, in 1963 and has since served as a model for other such ins ...

and an adjunct professor at the

Center for Contemporary Arab Studies The Center for Contemporary Arab Studies at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C., United States is an academic center "distinguished by its emphasis on study of the contemporary Arab world and its rigorous Arabic language training." Part of t ...

Georgetown University Georgetown University is a private university, private research university in the Georgetown (Washington, D.C.), Georgetown neighborhood of Washington, D.C. Founded by Bishop John Carroll (archbishop of Baltimore), John Carroll in 1789 as Georg ...

. Rashid Khalidi, the Edward Said Professor of Modern Arab Studies at

Columbia University Columbia University (also known as Columbia, and officially as Columbia University in the City of New York) is a private research university in New York City. Established in 1754 as King's College on the grounds of Trinity Church in Manhatt ...

, has called Tamari "the preeminent

Palestinian Palestinians ( ar, الفلسطينيون, ; he, פָלַסְטִינִים, ) or Palestinian people ( ar, الشعب الفلسطيني, label=none, ), also referred to as Palestinian Arabs ( ar, الفلسطينيين العرب, label=non ...

historical sociologist."

Early life and education

Tamari was born in the ancient port city of Jaffa, Palestine, in 1945. When he was three years old, in April 1948, his family fled Jaffa when it was attacked by Jewish paramilitary groups as part of the 1948 Arab–Israeli War. Tamari studied at Birzeit College (later renamed Birzeit University) in the

West Bank The West Bank ( ar, الضفة الغربية, translit=aḍ-Ḍiffah al-Ġarbiyyah; he, הגדה המערבית, translit=HaGadah HaMaʽaravit, also referred to by some Israelis as ) is a landlocked territory near the coast of the Mediter ...

and then received a B.A. in politics from

Drew University Drew University is a private university in Madison, New Jersey. Drew has been nicknamed the "University in the Forest" because of its wooded campus. As of fall 2020, more than 2,200 students were pursuing degrees at the university's three sch ...

in New Jersey, United States. He later received an M.A. in sociology from the

University of New Hampshire The University of New Hampshire (UNH) is a public land-grant research university with its main campus in Durham, New Hampshire. It was founded and incorporated in 1866 as a land grant college in Hanover in connection with Dartmouth College, m ...

and a Ph.D. in sociology from the

University of Manchester , mottoeng = Knowledge, Wisdom, Humanity , established = 2004 – University of Manchester Predecessor institutions: 1956 – UMIST (as university college; university 1994) 1904 – Victoria University of Manchester 1880 – Victoria Univ ...

Career

Tamari has been a sociologist at Birzeit University since 1971. In 1994, he was appointed director of the Institute of Jerusalem Studies, an affiliate of the Beirut-based Institute for Palestine Studies that publishes the Arabic journal Jerusalem Quarterly (formerly Jerusalem Quarterly File). He has also served on the refugee committee in the multilateral peace talks held following the

Madrid Conference of 1991 The Madrid Conference of 1991 was a peace conference, held from 30 October to 1 November 1991 in Madrid, hosted by Spain and co-sponsored by the United States and the Soviet Union. It was an attempt by the international community to revive the ...

. He has been a visiting fellow at the Aga Khan Program for Islamic Architecture at

MIT The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a private land-grant research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Established in 1861, MIT has played a key role in the development of modern technology and science, and is one of the m ...

, and has been a visiting professor at the University of California Berkeley (2005, 2007), New York University (2001–03); Cornell University (1997), and the University of Chicago (1991–92). He was a 2008 Eric Lane Fellow at the

University of Cambridge The University of Cambridge is a public collegiate research university in Cambridge, England. Founded in 1209 and granted a royal charter by Henry III in 1231, Cambridge is the world's third oldest surviving university and one of its most pr ...

and is a lecturer in Mediterranean Studies at the

Ca' Foscari University of Venice Ca' Foscari University of Venice ( it, Università Ca' Foscari Venezia, simply Università Ca' Foscari) is a public university in Venice, Italy. Since its foundation in 1868, it has been housed in the Venetian Gothic palace of Ca' Foscari, from ...

Works

Drawing upon archival materials and personal diaries, Tamari has produced numerous studies documenting and analysing Palestinian society. Books by Tamari include: *''Jerusalem 1948: The Arab Neighborhoods and Their Fate in the War'' *''Palestinian Refugee Negotiations: From Madrid to Oslo II'' *''Mountain against the Sea: Essays on Palestinian Society and Culture'' *''Year of the Locust: A Soldier's Diary and the Erasure of Palestine's Ottoman Past'', a biography of a young Palestinian soldier stationed in Jerusalem during World War I and referred to on worldcat.org as "the first ordinary recruit to describe the World War I from the Arab side". Berkeley: University of California Press, 2011.Year of the locust
entry on worldcat.org. Accessed August 2021.

Early life and education

Career

Works

References

Further reading