Faculty of the Week: Khalid Madhi

By ANVI BHATE, SELIM KIM, and CHENGYUE ZHANG

On a late Friday night, Dr. Khalid Madhi sits at a table in the Merrill common room. In the center of the room are a group of “Merrillites” laughing as they watch a movie. Another group of students huddle near the front of his table, checking-in with Madhi as he asks them about their day. One more student takes a seat next to Madhi, pulling up their history essay for some of his invaluable feedback. 

“Whenever he’s on duty night, we sometimes show movies in the common room and he sits through countless Twilight movies. We like to say he is The Twilight Saga’s number one fan because he sits through them during the night when we watch them together,” senior Sophie Fernandez said. 

Hailing from Morocco, Madhi is an instructor in history who was appointed to the Academy at the beginning of this year. Before Exeter, Madhi taught at Western Reserve Academy, a boarding school located in northeast Ohio. There, Madhi spearheaded many new initiatives, such as a new course on globalization and media as well as an elective for upperclassmen named Comparative and Urban Politics. Madhi also occasionally taught French. “Sometimes the numbers go up, and they need an extra teacher or volunteers. I always volunteered to teach because I love teaching and learning languages,” Madhi explained. 

After six years of Western Reserve Academy being a home for Madhi and his family, 

an open position at Exeter was hard to turn down. One aspect that drew Madhi to teach at Exeter was its transparent acknowledgement of its history and its commitment to being an anti-racist institution. “I wanted to seek a position with an institution that’s already on board with questions of diversity, race, and that would still be a good place for me to evolve but also contribute,” Madhi said.

These values that drew Madhi to Exeter, are also reflected in Madhi’s clear passion for social sciences. Over the years, Madhi has taught numerous courses of a wide variety surrounding the social and political courses, but the one that got him hooked was a religion course at a school in Chicago.

“I was invited to teach a course on Islamic tradition at a Jesuit university in Chicago,” Madhi said, explaining his first ever religion course. “At a Jesuit school, it’s required that every student take some training and some courses that have to do with religion.”

Madhi first came to the U.S. majoring in economics, but he changed his area of study to political science.“I thought I would be a successful economist or a banker, [but] it didn’t take long for me to say no, that’s not what I necessarily wanted to do,” Madhi reflected. “In my new environment, as an immigrant, as an international student, and as a minority, those questions of wealth production and wealth distribution were not the most pressing questions in my mind, and I wanted to move to understand my new social and political context more.”

Later, he came across gender and women’s studies and urban studies. “I dealt with questions of gender that revolve around political economy. In other words, the ways in which capitalism and colonialism subjugates others— women, people of color, and other minorities— and does so in comparable, but not identical ways. So I found those questions of inquiry much more interesting to me than studying diplomacy and international economics,” Madhi said.

Now that Madhi has been at Exeter for nearly two terms, he most enjoys the independent thinking process that Harkness provokes in its students. “I really enjoyed the fact that students are not so much in need of a lecture or a teacher to show them how much they know. I remember a colleague who interviewed me said, ‘[Exeter students] are not really interested in how much you know. If you’re the type that wants to come to class, have your PowerPoints, and lecture, it may not be really appreciated. Our students want to take ownership,’” Madhi said. “There isn’t one source of knowledge and everybody else is a recipient of that knowledge… I just appreciate this sort of a communal construction of knowledge… [and] the trust that’s given to students in this process.” 

When Madhi is at the Harkness table, he implements the aspects he admires most about Harkness in his classroom. Prep Advika Verma said, “He’s really good at having the students lead the conversation. I know he assigned students to lead conversations…but at the end of class, he was also really good at tying everything together, basically summarizing something, or adding on to stuff that we may have missed.” 

Madhi also believes it is unavoidable that people bring in their “experiences, upbringings, social, and political experiences” into the classroom. “As scholars or as teachers, we are not just researching something from afar and not affected by it. It’s a social world, not a lab, and we’re part of this social world,” Madhi said.

“I realized it was best for me to say, ‘Here are my biases. Here’s what I bring with me to the study of Africa, for instance,’” Madhi said. “Because I am from Africa, but I’m from a part that was deemed by the colonialist to be ‘European-ish, or white passing,’ my relationship with the continent is also fraught with all kinds of complexities and all kinds of contradictions.”

Madhi continued, “Hopefully [people’s personal experiences] will allow for a deeper understanding between the students and faculty… [and] a deeper understanding to students of the subject matter they’re attempting to study…What we do or teach are values from somewhere [and] not just simply facts. We determine some of it based on our varied and diverse positionalities.”

Upper Griffin Tierny’s experience with Madhi reflected Madhi’s teaching philosophy. “I’ve enjoyed having him as a teacher… Most of the teachers [teaching U.S. History] are primarily white Americans, so [Dr. Madhi] offers a perspective that cannot be duplicated,” Tierny said.

Besides providing insights and unique perspectives in class, Madhi is also an understanding teacher. “He’s good at understanding the students’ perspective, and he really puts their needs first,” Verma said. “As an advisor, [when] I was having [problems with] my roommate… he would come talk to me about it and be logical, telling me that my feelings were valid. As a teacher, whenever we needed any extensions, he would give it to us.”

“Over the years he has understood students more on what they wanna do.” Madhi’s daughter, lower Kenza Madhi said. “I always find him asking me ‘would you be annoyed if your teacher assigned this’ or ‘do you think that people would be interested in this activity.’ So I feel like he tries to make things interesting for students.” 

English Instructor Sahar Ullah noted that Madhi’s kindness has been especially welcoming. “Dr. Madhi and his family kindly invited me to the Muslim faculty affinity group to have a meal with them before classes began.Their kindness and hospitality was uplifting and a wonderful reminder of the possibilities of community again after so much isolation during the pandemic,” Ullah said.

Fernandez is an advisee of Madhi, and to her, Madhi is “probably one of the most supportive faculty” she’s ever met. “He really cares about the students and wants to make sure that they’re okay, and that they feel supported in every way possible,” Fernandez said.

“One time, I forgot to get dinner, and since he was really close to our dorm, he said I could just go over to his house. His wife then made me a peanut butter and jelly sandwich,” Fernandez said. 

Outside of the classroom, Madhi enjoys reading, traveling, and biking. He also likes to engage in “random arts projects.” 

“I really liked pottery, and ceramics. I wish I could just go back to it without disruptions. I also like Arabic calligraphy… It teaches me patience and to enjoy the process as opposed to rushing to a final thing,” Madhi said.