Samih K. Farsoun (1937-2005).

• Jurisdiction: United States
• Author: Aruri, Naseer H.
• Date: 22 June 2007

Born in Haifa, Palestine in 1937, Professor Samih K. Farsoun died unexpectedly on 9 June 2005 at the age of 68 in New Buffalo, Michigan. This tribute is based on a speech I delivered at the June 29, 2005 commemoration held at the Palestine Center in Washington DC.

Samih, we have been the closest of friends for one-third of a century, yet I feel I knew you for only a lamentably short period of time. Still, I knew you better than I knew anyone else. How quickly you have departed from our midst. It was too brief; too soon; too abrupt; too premature. I will never forget our never-ending discussions--from the mundane to the intellectual across a broad spectrum. You were so generous with your thoughts, ideas and your time. You gave freely of yourself, sharing your creativity and brilliance with me and others to whom you owed no special debt. It was this generosity of spirit and mind that set you apart from many other colleagues and friends. You never sought the limelight but opted instead to remain in the background, knowing that your contributions to the cause of Palestine, and indeed elsewhere, were far more important than advancing your own well-being. It was your astounding faith in the virtue of humility that set you apart from other similarly accomplished scholars and unsurpassed intellectuals.

You were the quintessential teacher who spoke spontaneously with encyclopedic knowledge across multi-disciplines--so widely read, so fluent and so at ease with the sciences as well as the humanities, a true renaissance man. You could speak authoritatively about architecture, mathematics, music, philosophy, social movements, political economy, Persian carpets, Gramsci, Lenin, Fanon, Confucius, and a host of other issues and topics. You were a sociologist by training, but you were also a philosopher of history, a political economist and a foreign...