The Dr Salem H Khamis Scholarship

Salem H. Khamis: Palestine, Nakba, and Exile

Born in 1919 in the village of Reineh on the outskirts of Nazareth in northern Palestine, Salem began his distinguished academic career at the Arab College in Jerusalem. He received a scholarship in 1938 to attend the American University of Beirut (AUB), graduating in 1942 after completing Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in mathematics and physics.

After a short stint teaching in Acre and Haifa, he returned to AUB in 1943 as a lecturer in mathematics. Two years later he began his doctoral studies at University College London on a British Council scholarship. Like many students from British colonies studying in London during this period, Salem joined his compatriots in mobilising against British policy and campaigned for the self-determination of his people. He became the founding Secretary of the Arab Students League in the UK, which was active in campaigning against the planned partition of Palestine.

International Scholarship and the United Nations

Like many Palestinian scholars of his generation, Salem committed himself to public service through the emerging institutions of international society. In 1986 Salem retired as Chair of the Statistical Development Service of the United Nations Food and Agricultural Organisation, a role that had taken him around the world for almost three decades, combining innovative scholarship with practical assistance in the service of the organisation’s mission to end world hunger. Driven by a commitment to empowering communities and sustainability, he worked, through secondments to the UN Development Programme, to develop local capacity and establish institutions capable of serving the needs of people in the Global South.
He was the first Director of the School of Statistics and Planning at Makerere University in Uganda, an institution that continues to train statisticians from across Africa to this day.