Hamid Dabashi (, ; born 1951) is an Iranian-American academic who holds the Hagop Kevorkian Professorship of Iranian studies and Comparative literature at Columbia University in New York City. Since 2020, he has served as Director of Undergraduate Studies in Columbia's Department of Middle Eastern, South Asian, and African Studies (MESAAS).
He is the author of over twenty books.Hamid Dabashi's Official Web Site Among them are Theology of Discontent, several books on Iranian cinema, Staging a Revolution, the edited volume Dreams of a Nation: On Palestinian Cinema, and his one-volume analysis of Iranian history, Iran: A People Interrupted.
Biography Born and raised in the southern city of Ahvaz in Iran, Dabashi was educated in Iran and then in the United States, where he received a dual Ph.D. in sociology of culture and Islamic studies from the University of Pennsylvania in 1984, followed by a postdoctoral fellowship at Harvard University. He wrote his dissertation on Max Weber's theory of charismatic authority with Freudian cultural critic Philip Rieff.
Major works
Hamid Dabashi's books are Iran: A People Interrupted, which traces the last two hundred years of Iran's history including analysis of cultural trends, and political developments, up to the collapse of the reform movement and the emergence of the presidency of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Dabashi argues that "Iran needs to be understood as the site of an ongoing contest between two contrasting visions of modernity, one colonial, the other anticolonial".
His book Theology of Discontent is a study of the global rise of Islamism as a form of liberation theology. His other book Close Up: Iranian Cinema, Past, Present, Future (2001) is a text on modern Iranian cinema and the phenomenon of (Iranian) national cinema as a form of cultural modernity and featured in the Lonely Planet travel guide for Iran. In his essay "For the Last Time: Civilizations", he has also posited the binary opposition between "Islam and the West" as a major narrative strategy of raising a fictive centre for European modernity and lowering the rest of the world as peripheral to that centre.
In Truth and Narrative, he has deconstructed the essentialist conception of Islam projected by Orientalists and Islamists alike. Instead he has posited, in what he calls a "polyfocal" conception of Islam, three competing discourses and institutions of authority – which he terms "nomocentric" (law-based), "logocentric" (reason-based) and "homocentric" (human-based) – vying for power and competing for legitimacy. The historical dynamics among these three readings of "Islam", he concludes, constitutes the moral, political and intellectual history of Muslims.
Among his other work are his essays Artist without Borders (2005), Women without Headache (2005), For the Last Time Civilization (2001) and "The End of Islamic Ideology" (2000).
Hamid Dabashi is also the author of numerous articles and public speeches, ranging in their subject matters from Islamism, feminism, globalised empire and ideologies and strategies of resistance, to visual and performing arts in a global context.
Among his books published after 2010 are:
Shi'ism: A Religion of Protest (Harvard University Press, 2011), which won the Marginal Revolution Book of the Year award; The World of Persian Literary Humanism (Harvard University Press, 2012); Can Non-Europeans Think? (Zed Books, 2015); Persophilia: Persian Culture on the Global Scene (Harvard University Press, 2015); Iran without Borders: Towards a Critique of the Postcolonial Nation (Verso, 2016); The Shahnameh: The Persian Epic as World Literature (Columbia University Press, 2019); On Edward Said: Remembrance of Things Past (Haymarket Books, 2020); The Last Muslim Intellectual: The Life and Legacy of Jalal Al-e Ahmad (Edinburgh University Press, 2021); The End of Two Illusions: Islam after the West (University of California Press, 2022); An Iranian Childhood: Rethinking History and Memory (2023).
Film and art
Dabashi was consulted by Ridley Scott for Kingdom of Heaven (2005). Scott claimed his film was approved and verified by Dabashi: "I showed the film to one very important Muslim in New York, a lecturer from Columbia, and he said it was the best portrayal of Saladin he's ever seen". Dabashi praised the film for "linking historical events with contemporary issues" and called it a "work of art by a major filmmaker."
Dabashi was the chief consultant to Hany Abu-Assad's Paradise Now (2005) and Shirin Neshat's Women Without Men (2009). Dabashi appears in Bavand Karim's Nation of Exiles (2010), providing analysis of the Iranian Green Movement.
Dabashi has also served as jury member on many international art and film festivals, most recently the Locarno International Festival in Switzerland. In the context of his commitment to advancing trans-national art and independent world cinema, he is the founder of Dreams of a Nation, a Palestinian Film Project, dedicated to preserving and safeguarding Palestinian Cinema. For his contributions to Iranian cinema, Mohsen Makhmalbaf, the Iranian film-maker called Dabashi "a rare cultural critic".
Public views and controversies
Dabashi has been a commentator on a number of political issues, often regarding the Middle East, Columbia University, American foreign policy, or a combination of those.
Columbia University
Israel-Palestine conflict In 2002, Dabashi sharply criticized Rabbi Charles Sheer (who was the university's Jewish chaplain between 1969 and 2004) after he admonished several professors for cancelling their classes to attend pro-Palestinian rallies. Dabashi wrote in the Columbia Spectator that Rabbi Sheer "has taken upon himself the task of mobilizing and spearheading a crusade of fear and intimidation against members of the Columbia faculty and students who have dared to speak against the slaughter of innocent Palestinians."
Columbia Unbecoming controversy (2004–2005) Dabashi was one of the three professors named in the David Project’s short film Columbia Unbecoming, which included accusations of antisemitism against the professors. According to the New York Times, Dabashi was mentioned principally because of his published political viewpoints, and that he had canceled a class to attend a Palestinian rally. The New York chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union sided with the professors. An ad hoc committee formed by Lee C. Bollinger, Columbia University's president, reported in March 2005 that they could not find any credible allegations of antisemitism, but did criticize the university's grievance procedures, and recommended changes.
Views on Israel Dabashi has described the state of Israel as "a dyslexic Biblical exegesis," "occupied Palestine," "a vicarious avocation," "a dangerous delusion," "a colonial settlement," "a Jewish apartheid state," and "a racist apartheid state"."Obama's Palestinian problem" by Hamid Dabashi, Al-Ahram Weekly, 26 June - 2 July 2008, Issue No. 903. In an interview with AsiaSource in June 2003, Dabashi stated that supporters of Israel "cannot see that Israel over the past 50 years as a colonial state - first with white European colonial settlers, then white American colonial settlers, now white Russian colonial settlers—amounts to nothing more than a military base for the rising predatory empire of the United States. Israel has no privilege greater or less than Pakistan or Kuwait or Saudi Arabia. These are all military bases but some of them, like Israel, are like the hardware of the American imperial imagination."
In an interview with the Electronic Intifada in September 2002, Dabashi referred to the pro-Israel lobby as "Gestapo apparatchiks" and that "The so-called "pro-Israeli lobby" is an integral component of the imperial designs of the Bush administration for savage and predatory globalization." He also criticized "fanatic zealots from Brooklyn" who have settled on Palestinian lands. Dabashi has also harshly criticized the New York Times for what he describes as a bias towards Israel, stating that the paper is "the single most nauseating propaganda paper on planet."How Do We Sleep While Beirut Is Burning? by Hamid Dabashi, OhmyNews, August 9, 2006.(retrieved on November 8, 2008).
In September 2004, Dabashi sharply criticized Israel in the Egyptian newspaper Al-Ahram, writing that:
Responding to Dabashi's Al-Ahram essay, Columbia University President Lee Bollinger said, "I want to completely disassociate myself from those ideas. They're outrageous things to say, in my view." Jonathan Rosenblum, director of Jewish Media Resources, later also criticized Dabashi's column."Double standards: by Jonathan Rosenblum, Jewish Media Resources, March 18, 2005, archived on July 3, 2018. In The Bulletin, Herb Denenberg wrote that Dabashi's article "is not borderline racism. It's as gross and obvious as racism can get.""Columbia Has Come To Stand For Terrorism, Genocide" By Herb Denenberg, The Bulletin, January 20, 2009. Writing in The Nation, Scott Sherman wrote that Dabashi's article was "troubling" because of its "sweeping characterization of an entire people-"Israeli Jews" or not—as vulgar and domineering in their very essence. The passage can easily be construed as anti-Semitic. Dabashi, at a minimum, is guilty of shrill and careless writing.""The Mideast Comes to Columbia: by Scott Sherman, March 16, 2005, archived on July 3, 2018.
In a letter to the Columbia Spectator, Dabashi wrote that the above passage was "not a racial characterization of a people, but a critical reflection on the body politics of state militarism" and the effects that it has on human beings. Dabashi also apologized for "any hurt that I may have inadvertently caused" due to the interpretation of the passage."Dabashi Explains Comments on Militarism of Israel" by Hamid Dabashi, Columbia Spectator, January 27, 2005. In a sworn statement submitted to the US Commission on Civil Rights, Dabashi stated that he has not expressed, nor ever harbored, any antisemitic sentiments and that the 2004 Al-Ahram essay was being misconstrued.US "Commission on Civil Rights - Campus Anti-Semitism", Briefing Report, July 2006.
He subsequently criticized pro-Israel groups in the United States again, writing in Palestine Chronicle in 2009 that the "pro-Israeli Zionist lobby in the US banked and invested heavily in infiltrating, buying, and paying for all the major and minor corridors of power.""The Moral and Military Meltdown of Israel" by Hamid Dabashi, The Palestine Chronicle, January 12, 2009. In the same article, Dabashi endorsed cultural and academic boycotts of Israel. In that article, Dabashi advocated for boycott efforts targeting both individuals and institutions:
On May 8, 2018, Dabashi tweeted, "Every dirty treacherous ugly and pernicious act happening in the world just wait for a few days and the ugly name of 'Israel' will pup...".(Twitter link (404), Archive link) Rena Nasar, a StandWithUs campus director, told the student-run news website Campus Reform that "blaming the Jewish state for every problem in the world is virulent anti-Semitism, echoing rhetoric that has led to oppression and violence against Jews for centuries.""Columbia U alums call for professor to be suspended over anti-Zionist posts", Times of Israel, 7 June 2018."Columbia professor under fire for blaming Israel for every problem 'in the world'", Caleb Parke, Fox News, 11 May 2018.
Dabashi is on the advisory board of the U.S. Campaign for the Academic & Cultural Boycott of Israel (see Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel).
In 2025, Dabashi wrote an opinion piece in the Middle East Eye, arguing that Israel has conducted an "incremental Palestinian genocide" over the past century and that Gaza genocide denial should be considered a criminal offence worldwide.
Criticism of Lee Bollinger