Hisham Sharabi, 72; Palestinian American Intellectual, Activist

Hisham Sharabi, 72, a Palestinian American intellectual and political activist, died Thursday of cancer in Beruit.

Sharabi, the son of a wealthy Palestinian family from Jaffa, studied philosophy at American University of Beirut and later in the United States. He earned a doctorate in the history of culture from the University of Chicago in 1953. When Israel was created in 1948, Sharabi was a student in the United States, and he found himself without a home to return to.

He was a professor of European intellectual history and political science at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C., from 1953 until his retirement in 1998.

Sharabi became politically active at an early age, joining the Syrian Social Nationalist Party in Lebanon in the late 1940s. Shortly after, the Lebanese government cracked down on the party, forcing Sharabi to flee to Jordan and then to the United States.