Hisham Sharabi

Hisham Bashir Sharabi was born in Jaffa and raised in Acre, graduating from the American University of Beirut before earning a doctorate in the history of culture from the University of Chicago in 1953. In 1953, he joined the faculty of Georgetown University in Washington, D.C., where he held the Umar al-Mukhtar Chair of Arab Culture for over four decades.

Sharabi was a fearless analyst of Arab intellectual and political stagnation. His landmark 1988 scholarly work, Neopatriarchy: A Theory of Distorted Change in Arab Society, analyzed how modern authoritarian states in the Middle East perpetuated traditional patriarchal clan structures beneath modern bureaucratic veneers. He co-founded the Center for Policy Analysis on Palestine in Washington.