Nikki r keddie biography of alberta

“My Life and Ideas: A Brief Overview” (slightly updated since the original, written for the Balzan Foundation, appeared in 2005)

In looking back at my life it seems important to write not only about aspects directly relevant to my profession as a historian, but also about my political life, which influenced my decision to be a historian and to study the Middle East, and which continues, in a time of renewed political repression, to be relevant to understanding the life of academics and others in the United States.

I grew up mainly in New York City after spending ages 3-6 in upstate New York.

Nikki r keddie biography of alberta canada

My father managed textile factories and my mother from time to time worked for the Soviet- American Trade Organization, Amtorg, though she mostly stayed home with me and my older and younger brothers. I was what in today’s U.S.

is called a “red diaper baby” with leftist parents. From the age of six I was intensely interested in political, especially