Joseph Massad

جوزيف مسعد

Born: Amman, Jordan

Domain: Academia & Thought

Recognition: REGIONAL

Biography

Joseph Andoni Massad is a Palestinian scholar born in Amman, Jordan, in 1963. He completed his undergraduate and master's studies at the University of New Mexico and earned his doctorate at Columbia University in 1998, where he was mentored by Edward Said. He went on to join the Columbia faculty as professor of modern Arab politics and intellectual history in the Department of Middle Eastern, South Asian and African Studies, becoming one of the most provocative and widely debated scholars in the field. Massad's scholarship engages Arab intellectual history, theories of identity, nationalism, gender, and sexuality, and sustained critiques of Zionism and Western liberalism. His first book, Colonial Effects: The Making of National Identity in Jordan (2001), analyzed how law and the military shaped Jordanian national identity, establishing him as a serious theorist of postcolonial state formation. His most discussed and controversial work, Desiring Arabs (2007), which won the Lionel Trilling Book Award, examined Western and Arab discourses on sexuality and argued that what he termed the "Gay International" imposed Western categories of sexual identity onto Arab societies. The book became a landmark and lightning rod in debates over sexuality, orientalism, and human rights, generating extensive scholarly and political controversy. In The Persistence of the Palestinian Question (2006) and Islam in Liberalism (2015), Massad extended his critique of how liberalism and Western discourse construct the Arab and Muslim as objects of intervention and reform. His work is theoretically dense, polemical, and deeply influenced by the critical tradition of his teacher Edward Said. Though a polarizing figure who has attracted intense criticism as well as a devoted following, Massad is among the most cited contemporary scholars of Arab intellectual history and the critique of Zionism. His writing has shaped debates across postcolonial studies, queer theory, and Middle East studies, marking him as a leading, if contentious, Palestinian voice in the global academy.

Why This Person Matters

A Said-trained Columbia theorist, Massad is among the most cited and controversial contemporary scholars of Arab intellectual history, sexuality, and the critique of Zionism and liberalism.