Statement: ADC Mourns the Passing of Walid Khalidi, a Pioneering Scholar for Palestine

Washington, D.C. | March 9, 2026 – The American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC) expresses its great sadness at the passing of Walid Khalidi, a pioneering scholar of Palestinian history.

Khalidi passed away on Sunday, March 8, at the age of 100, after a decades-long career that laid the groundwork for the academic study of modern Palestinian history. Throughout his life, Khalidi bore witness to the injustice inflicted upon his people and tirelessly worked to correct the historical record, which, until Khalidi’s groundbreaking research, was rooted in Zionist mythology.

Walid Khalidi was born in Jerusalem, Palestine, in 1925, and studied at the University of London and Oxford University, where he also taught until resigning his position to protest the tripartite invasion of Egypt by Britain, France, and Israel in 1956. He later taught at the American University of Beirut and the Institute of Middle Eastern Studies at Harvard and Princeton University.

In 1963, Mr. Khalidi co-founded the Institute for Palestine Studies (IPS), which remains the most comprehensive archive of Palestinian history and current affairs. IPS is based in Beirut, with offices in Washington, D.C., and Jerusalem.

During the 1950s, when Zionist discourse dominated Western narratives, Khalidi effectively challenged the Zionist myth that Palestinians fled out of their own free will or under Arab government pressure. Instead, his scholarship demonstrated that Zionist claims about Arab broadcasts were false and that the Zionist Plan Dalet was the main cause of the Palestinian refugee crisis.

Mr. Khalidi further documented the expulsion of Palestinians in his seminal work ​​All That Remains: The Palestinian Villages Occupied and Depopulated by Israel in 1948, and his book Before Their Diaspora: A Photographic History of the Palestinians, 1876–1948, remains one of the most detailed records of Palestinian life before the Nakba. Additionally, Khalidi’s introduction to the anthology From Haven to Conquest offers one of the best insights into the origins of the Palestinian struggle. (See the abridged version below.)

ADC has been honored to host Khalidi at our annual conferences multiple times, where audiences have always deeply appreciated his unmatched insight and knowledge. For his lifelong scholarship, which significantly shifted academic understanding of Palestine, Khalidi was recognized as a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Khalidi’s impact went beyond academia as his scholarship was widely disseminated and helped countless people better understand the Palestinian cause. His legacy is the growing support for Palestinian rights. 

Khalidi’s insights will be profoundly missed, but we honor his legacy by continuing the fight to free Palestine.

Recommended Reading: 

The Hebrew Reconquista of Palestine: From the 1947 United Nations Partition Resolution to the First Zionist Congress of 1897