This year's Reith lecturer is the Palestinian American academic, political activist, and literary critic Edward Said. He joined the faculty of Columbia University in 1963 where he is now Professor of English and Comparative Literature. Regarded as one of the founders of post-colonial theory, his 1978 book Orientalism is one of the most influential scholarly books of the 20th century.

In his third lecture, Edward Said looks at intellectuals both as expatriates and as people on the margins of their own society. He examines how exile inspires their thinking and considers representations of the intellectual as the permanent exile.