| From
1960 to 1963, Ahmad lived in North Africa, working
primarily in Algeria, where he joined the National
Liberation Front and worked with Frantz Fanon. He
was a member of the Algerian delegation to peace
talks at Evian.
When
he returned to the United States, Ahmad taught
at the University of Illinois at Chicago (1964
- 1965) and Cornell University in the school of
Labour Relations (1965 - 1968). During these years,
he became known as "one of the earliest and
most vocal opponents of American policies in Vietnam
and Cambodia". In 1969, he married the teacher
and writer Julie Diamond. From 1968 to 1972, he
was a fellow at the Adlai Stevenson Institute
in Chicago.
In
1971, Ahmad was indicted with the anti-war Catholic
priests, Daniel and Phillip Berrigan, along with
four other Catholic pacifists, on charges of conspiracy
to kidnap Henry Kissinger. After fifty-nine hours
of deliberations, the jury declared a mistrial.
From
1972 to 1982, Ahmad was Senior Fellow at the Institution
for Policy Studies. From 1973 to 1975, he served
as the first director of its overseas affiliate,
the Transnational Institute in Amsterdam.
In
1982, Ahmad joined the faculty at Hampshire College,
in Amherst Massachusetts, where he taught world
politics and political science.
In
the early 1990's he was granted a parcel of land
in Pakistan by Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto's
government to build an independent, alternative
university, named Khaldunia. The land was later
seized by Bhutto's husband, Asif Zardari, reportedly
to build a golf course and club.
A
prolific writer and journalist, Eqbal was widely
consulted by revolutionaries, journalists, activist
leaders and policymakers around the world. He
was an editor of the journal Race and Class, contributing
editor of Middle East Report and L'Economiste
du Tiers Monde, co-founder of Pakistan Forum,
and an editorial board member of Arab Studies
Quarterly. Ahmad was "that rare thing, an
intellectual unintimidated by power or authority,
a companion in arms to such diverse figures as
Noam Chomsky, Howard Zinn, Ibrahim Abu-Lughod,
Richard Falk, Fred Jameson, Alexander Cockburn
and Daniel Berrigan."
Upon
his retirement from Hampshire in 1997, he settled
permanently in Pakistan, where he continued to
write a weekly column, for Dawn, Pakistan's oldest
English language newspaper. Eqbal died in Islamabad
on May 11, 1999, of heart failure following surgery
for colon cancer, diagnosed just one week before.
|
|
