By: Sharmila Lodhia

On September 25, 2003 distinguished intellectual, writer and activist, Edward Said, died at the age of 67, after battling leukemia. A tremendous sense of loss was felt throughout the world for an individual whose contributions to academic scholarship and an expansion of the discourse and dialogue around the plight of the Palestinian people, have impacted so many. His scholarly work included texts such as Orientalism, Culture and Imperialism, The Politics of Dispossession and The Question of Palestine. The breadth of his influence and profound humanity was felt on November, 21, 2003 at a symposium entitled "After the Last Sky: The Humanism of Edward Said." Co-organized by Sondra Hale of Anthropology and Women's Studies and Aamir Mufti of Comparative Literature, the event's expansive range of co-sponsoring Centers and Departments throughout UCLA was a testament to the breadth of Said's impact on various disciplines. The list of event co-sponsors included but was not limited to the Center for the Study of Women, the Center for East Asian Studies, the Department of English, the Department of Musicology and the Department of French and Francophone Studies.

Speakers at the symposium included friends, admirers and a family member of Edward Said, each of whom offered short talks describing the impact of Said's life and work on their own disciplines and research. The event began with Opening Remarks by Professor of Art History, Saloni Mathur, who stated profoundly that Said "left us when we needed him the most." This statement in many ways set the tone for the symposium which highlighted some of Said's tremendous contributions to academia as well as his courageous pursuit of justice for disempowered and displaced people inPalestine and in other parts of the world. Said's nephew, Saree Makdisi, Professor of English, beautifully stated that Said's struggle for "the idea of Palestine is larger than Palestine itself" and in its essence was linked to the broader question of "what it means to be human."

Professor Aamir Mufti spoke of Said's "Critical Secularism" as a core element of his work. He said that Said was a "waking civilization that will never again be reproduced." Professor Sondra Hale then shared with the captive and packed full audience of students and faculty, her reading of Said's work and particularly her endeavor to find women in his writing which, while not expressly feminist, she credited with having changed the representation of Muslim and Middle Eastern women. In his famous and widely read text, Orientalism, Hale described having found a critical language with which to respond to the exoticized, totalized, and passive images of these so often "Othered" women. In her deep and emotional tribute she acknowledged the contribution Said has made to "freeing Middle East gender studies from Orientalist hegemony."

Other talks throughout the day read Said's work within the narrative of Africa, in his notion of the discrepant in the work of Simone de Beauvior, and as a psychic presence in Ahdaf Soueif's novel Map of Love. The event ended with a memorable and moving cello and piano concert by Elisabeth Le Guin and Susan McClary, that celebrated Said's passion for classical music.

I, myself was introduced in a more concrete way to Said's work during a course I took with Sondra Hale entitled "Postcolonial Theories". I felt deeply inspired by his writing because it spoke so deeply to the triumph of the spirit and of people in the face of injustice, inequality and spiritual and physical dislocation. His work has disrupted dominant Western thinking about ancient civilizations, cultures and religions. In this current historical moment when military occupations, attacks on civil liberties and global manifestations of neo-imperialism are being increasingly felt, his dissenting and critical voice, as Mathur noted, is most certainly "needed most." It was with this feeling that the symposium closed, with a sense not of an end to Said's far-reaching work, but with a challenge to make, as he did, to a lifelong commitment to the pursuit of justice, in both academic and public life. Edward Said's defiant spirit will certainly live on if we too refuse to stand silent in the face of oppression.

Sharmila Lodhia is a Ph.D. candidate in the UCLA Women's Studies Programs