When Orientalism Becomes a Career: From James Mill to Jared Kushner
In Benjamin Disraeli’s 1847 novel Tancred, there is a short line that Edward Said would return to more than a century later: “The East...
Capitalism, Imperialism and America’s Middle East Wars: A Marxist Perspective
More than 150 years after Karl Marx penned his famous line: “Capital comes dripping from head to foot, from every pore, with blood and...
The Oslo Trap: What Iran Should Learn from a Peace Process That Never Ended
There is something hauntingly familiar about the proposed U.S.-Iran Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) now circulating through diplomatic channels. The tone sounds restrained. Technical. Responsible....
The Strait Where Power Confronts What War Means
There exist places that appear to thwart the ambition of countries. Places where power, however immense, encounters limits it did not design. The Strait...
Iran, Trump, and the Imperial Licence to Break the Law
Donald Trump’s war on Iran has done what imperial wars often do. It has stripped the familiar vocabulary to the bone. The old words...
The New Orientalist Order: Trump, Kushner, and the Art of Ungoverned Power
The Promise of a Post-Imperial Age
It is comforting to believe that Orientalism belongs to another century. When Edward Said coined the term, he was...
Equality, History, and the Question of Palestinian Statehood
A thread runs from Christopher Hitchens to Edward Said and straight into Gaza’s present: the fight over who gets to live as a political...
Makers Without Mercy: Frankenstein and the Age of AI
Oscar-winning director Guillermo del Toro’s new film Frankenstein brings Shelley’s old questions back into sharp focus. Watching it, I wasn’t thinking about the film...
108 Years of Balfour and the Unfinished Question of Palestine
This November marks 108 years since the Balfour Declaration, a promise written in London by men who had never walked the soil of Palestine....
From Anarchy to Etiquette: The UN, IR Theories, and the Politics of Trump’s Ceasefire
When Donald Trump announced a new “ceasefire deal” between Israel, Qatar, Turkey, and the United States, the world reacted with a mixture of fatigue...