Philip Khuri Hitti (Arabic: فيليب خوري حتي), (Shimlan 22 June 1886 – Princeton 24 December 1978) was a Lebanese-American professor and scholar at Princeton and Harvard University, and authority on Arab and Middle Eastern history, Islam, and Semitic languages. He almost single-handedly created the discipline of Arabic studies in the United States. His grandniece was the now deceased NASA astronaut and schoolteacher Christa McAuliffe. Biography Early life Hitti was born in Ottoman Lebanon into a Maronite Christian family, in the village of Shemlan some 25 km southeast from Beirut, up in Mount Lebanon. Education and academic career He was educated at an American Presbyterian mission school at Suq al-Gharb and then at the American University of Beirut (AUB). After graduating in 1908 he taught at the American University of Beirut before moving to Columbia University where he earned his PhD in 1915 and taught Semitic languages. After World War I he returned to AUB and taught there until 1926. In February 1926 he was offered a Chair at Princeton University, which he held until he retired in 1954. During World War II, he taught Arabic to servicemen at Princeton through the Army Specialized Training Program (including future Ambassador Rodger Paul Davies). Hitti was both Professor of Semitic Literature and Chairman of the Department of Oriental Languages. After formal retirement he accepted a position at Harvard University. He also taught in the summer schools at the University of Utah and George Washington University in Washington, D.C. He subsequently held a research position at the University of Minnesota. Opinion on Arab-Jewish conflict over Palestine In 1944 before a U. S. House committee, Hitti gave testimony in support of the view that there was no historical justification for a Jewish homeland in Palestine. His testimony was reprinted in the Princeton Herald. In response, Albert Einstein and his friend and colleague Erich Kahler jointly replied in the same newspaper with their counter-arguments. Hitti then published a response and Einstein and Kahler concluded the debate in the Princeton Herald with their second response. In 1945 Hitti served as an adviser to the Iraqi delegation at the San Francisco Conference which established the United Nations. In 1946, Hitti was the first Lebanese-American witness at the Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry on Palestine. Bartley Crum, an American member of the committee, recalled that Hitti... explained that there was actually no such entity as Palestine - never had been;