I was just a kid when I shook the man’s hand. I had just sat through my first university lecture in the Campanile Room and I was only 9 or 10 years old. My dad brought the whole family to hear this man speak. I don’t remember what he said, but I do recall my throat burning with pride that he seemed to speak so well. I wondered why all of these people were there with tape recorders and taking notes and wondering why so many people were there to hear him.

The speech ended and my dad prodded my younger brother and I up to him, introduced himself, my brother and I, and I looked up at this tall guy in a suit and shook his hand.

I did not know it then, but this man was to become one of my heroes.

As I got older, I read many of his books and articles, and watched his documentary. In my remote rural Iowan way, I came to respect this man like few others.

Edward W. Said, one of the most articulate and passionate advocates for the Palestinian people and the oppressed everywhere passed away Thursday in New York City after an 11-year battle with leukemia.

A world-renowned scholar and University Professor of Comparative Literature at Columbia University, his was a voice of reason, multiculturalism and fierce opposition to injustice, violence and ethnocentrism and I was forever affected.

Born in British-controlled Palestine in Jerusalem, and educated at Princeton and Harvard, the man was a brilliant and prolific author, and considered a leading scholar and social critic of our time. His writing was translated into 26 languages and his 10 books inspired an entire generation of people to criticism of colonialism and hegemony.

His seminal book, “Orientalism,” published in 1978, changed the way the Western world looked at “the East” and helped to begin the study of post-colonialism in the social sciences and humanities. In “Orientalism,” Said argues that the scholarship on Asia and the Middle East since the Napoleonic invasion of Egypt distorted and sensationalized the people of the region and the effects carry on to this day. “Orientalism” was the primary source in my first research paper in high school.

Said was a gifted pianist who performed with friend Daniel Barenboim, an Israeli, and wrote music reviews for The Nation and a weekly opinion piece in the Arabic daily Al-Hayat.

In a special tribute on its Web site, The Nation said, “Known both for his groundbreaking research in the field of comparative literature and his incisive political commentary, Said was one of the most prominent intellectuals in the United States.”

His courageous criticism of Yasser Arafat and many other Palestinian leaders challenged advocates of the Palestinian cause in new ways.

His sharp criticism didn’t win him love from everyone. Said’s books were banned in Arabic by Yasser Arafat in the Palestinian territories and his New York office was firebombed by suspected members of the extremist Jewish Defense League.

He was a man with his flaws, known for occasional arrogance and sometimes numbingly repetitive criticism of Israel or the Palestinian Authority.

He reserved some of his most biting commentary for fellow academics like Bernard Lewis and Fouad Ajami, about their misrepresentation of Arabs, Muslims and Palestinians.

Though a Palestinian Christian, he was a staunch defender of Islam. In his book, “Covering Islam,” as Richard Bernstein of The New York Times quoted, he slams the Western media for depicting Arabs “synonymous with trouble — rootless, mindless, gratuitous trouble.”

He was man who rejected violence as a means of achieving his dream of a separate Palestinian independence, but rather ultimately believed in a single, secular, binational Palestine-Israel.

He wrote in The New York Times in 1999 that “I see no other way than to begin now to speak about sharing the land that has thrust us together, and sharing it in a truly democratic way, with equal rights for each citizen. There can be no reconciliation unless both peoples, two communities of suffering, resolve that their existence is a secular fact, and that it has to be dealt with as such.”

Perhaps what is most remarkable is not his tireless advocacy on the part of the Palestinians, but his incredible ability to apply ideas of Palestinian human rights and democracy to all of humanity.

He was an inspirational Palestinian torn between East and West who said he never quite fit in. He was a tireless advocate for independence and justice for the Palestinian people, the misrepresented, and the oppressed. His work throughout the world changed my life here in faraway Iowa and I am sure it will continue to inspire generations.

I can think of a lot of things to say since I shook the hand of Edward Said in my youthful naivet‚ that evening, but “thank you” is all I want to say now.

The world lost a truly remarkable human being Thursday, and I cannot think of anything Edward Said would want us to do more than to keep on fighting injustice in his name.