REVISITING HITTI'S THOUGHTS ON PALESTINE AND ARAB IDENTITY.

Hitti, Philip K.; Ethnic identity of Arab Americans; United States emigration & immigration; Arab Americans; Palestinians; Diaspora

Philip K. Hitti was the first scholar to study Arab-American immigration to the United States. Highly influential during the twentieth century, his ideas have lost much of their appeal to current interpreters of the early diaspora of Arab-Americans called Syrians at the time. This article revisits Hitti's thought, focusing on the issues of Palestine and Arab identity. Using primary source material from Hitti's archived papers, plus multiple secondary sources, I argue that Hitti maintained consistency, both in his advocacy of the general Arab stance opposing a Jewish homeland in Palestine, and in his construction of Arab identity as different from Syrian identity. On Palestine, Hitti clashed with Albert Einstein, in public discourse and in an acerbic private exchange of correspondence. On Arab identity, Hitti held firm to a strict interpretation, distinguishing Syrians, conceptualized as Christian, from Arabs, conceptualized as Islamic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]