The passing away on Monday of Dr. Jack Shaheen at the age of 81 is a huge loss to all those who oppose the negative stereotyping of Arabs. An American scholar and author of Lebanese origin, he dedicated his career to making “visible what too many of us (in the West) seem not to see: A dangerously consistent pattern of hateful Arab stereotypes, stereotypes that rob an entire people of their humanity.”

His ground-breaking works include “The TV Arab,” “Guilty: Hollywood’s Verdict on Arabs After 9/11” and “Arab and Muslim Stereotyping in American Popular Culture.” Although not Muslim himself, Shaheen believed that “whenever we see anyone vilified on a regular basis, we have to speak up. We have to take a stand to say it is morally and ethically wrong to demonize a people.” This principled stand against stereotyping in general gives his work a universal resonance.

He is best known for authoring “Reel Bad Arabs: How Hollywood Vilifies a People,” which was adapted to a documentary that is essential viewing for anyone concerned about this issue. For “Reel Bad Arabs” he studied 1,000 Hollywood films, from 1896 to 2000, that have Arab characters. Almost 94 percent (936) of the depictions were negative, 52 were neutral and only 12 (1.2 percent) were positive.

Shaheen’s research led him to conclude that “Arabs are the most maligned group in the history of Hollywood. They are portrayed basically as sub-human,” and are “used by filmmakers as stock villains and as comic relief.”

The portrayals range from being “buffoons” to being “dangerous,” “too rich… to know the value of money,” “oversexed” and “lecherous.” Shaheen found that even Disney movies are guilty of this, as are films that have nothing to do with the Middle East.

He explored the reasons for this systemic anti-Arab sentiment in Hollywood. “Once upon a time I thought the stereotyping of Arabs was because of ignorance. No more,” he said. “I know it is more straight-out purposeful now... Arab-bashing is a sure-fire box office winner.”

He was recognized worldwide as an authority on this subject, giving lectures and media appearances, working as a consultant on Middle East affairs at US broadcaster CBS News, and receiving awards from the University of Pennsylvania (where he did his masters) and the American Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC). The Dearborn, Michigan-based Arab Community Center for Economic and Social Services (ACCESS) named him Arab American of the Year in 2015.

Academically, he won two Fulbright scholarships, one of them to teach at the American University of Beirut (AUB). He was also a professor of mass communications at Southern Illinois University, and the distinguished visiting scholar at New York University’s Hagop Kevorkian Center for Near Eastern Studies.

The passing away of Dr. Jack Shaheen at the age of 81 is a huge loss. He will be sorely missed, but his passion, vision, inspiration and optimism will live on.

Sharif Nashashibi

Shaheen was a personal and professional inspiration to me. I first came across his work almost two decades ago when I was doing my masters in international journalism at London’s City University. While conducting my own research and analysis of negative portrayals of Arabs in the media, I found many similarities between the media and film industries in this respect.

Shaheen’s work provided an invaluable insight into the status quo, but even more importantly for me as a young student at the time, a historical perspective. Upon graduating, I searched for organizations in Britain that dealt with negative media portrayals of Arabs, in the hope that I could contribute to them. But I was surprised that for such a prevalent and persistent problem, none existed.

So in 2000 I set up an independent, non-profit watchdog called Arab Media Watch (AMW), which for 10 years monitored British media coverage of Arab issues; produced reports and studies; organized topical events; liaised with journalists and facilitated their work; wrote letters and articles for the press; and gave as well as arranged interviews.

It was as part of my work with AMW that I was given an award by the International Media Council “for both facilitating and producing consistently balanced reporting” on the Middle East. I owe that fascinating and fulfilling decade of my professional life, and AMW’s many contributions, partly to Shaheen.

He asked a simple yet powerful question: “We have unlearned many of our prejudices against blacks, Native Americans, Jews and other groups. Why can’t we unlearn our prejudices against Arabs?” To me, he answered his own question by saying: “I am an optimist and I believe in the future, particularly in young filmmakers. The stereotype will change.”

In other words, I believe, Shaheen thinks anti-Arab prejudices can be unlearned, as other racial prejudices have been — a sentiment with which I agree. Just as his optimism stems from young filmmakers, mine stems from young Arab journalists in the West, because they can change the industry from within rather than as outsiders, and can do so in a part of the world where they do not face the same constraints as they do in the Middle East.

My decision some 20 years ago to become a journalist was met with derision by many Arabs from the elder generation, who held a defeatist attitude about Arabs’ ability to succeed in an industry that they saw as inherently and implacably hostile to us. But they were proved wrong by my generation of Western-educated and trained Arab journalists, including this newspaper’s editor in chief.

Do not expect quick results to an ingrained problem, but I have faith, as did Shaheen, that the next generations will continue to make progress in this important struggle, in large part due to his invaluable contribution to raising awareness about the scale and nature of the challenge to be overcome. Shaheen will be sorely missed, but his passion, vision, inspiration and optimism will live on.

• Sharif Nashashibi is an award-winning journalist and commentator on Arab affairs.