Hisham Aidi is a Moroccan-American political scientist, author, music critic, filmmaker, and senior lecturer in international relations at the School of International and Public Affairs at Columbia University.^{[1][2][3][4][5]} His research interests include comparative race politics, art and social movements, and the political economy of development.^[6]

His book Rebel Music: Race, Empire, and the New Muslim Youth Culture on global hip hop was a 2015 winner of the American Book Award.^[7]

Aidi was born in Tangier and grew up in its old city.^[3][5] His formative years also included time in Spain, where his father worked.^[3] As a teenager, he would frequent Tangier's Dar Gnawa, or the House of Gnawa, where he might see guests such as the saxophonist Archie Shepp or the jazz poet Ted Joans.^[5]

When he was 15, he earned a scholarship to study at a boarding school in New Mexico in the United States.^[1][2] He then attended Franklin & Marshall College outside of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in the early 1990s, studying political theory and economics.^[1][2] He also worked in college radio, where he played raï music and recordings by Abdessadiq Cheqara and Samy Elmaghribi.^[2] He wrote an undergraduate thesis entitled "Is Paul Bowles an Orientalist?" about the American writer in Tangier, and gave literary walking tours of Tangier over the summer.^[8]

In 1993, he began his doctoral studies at Columbia University, where he studied under and interacted with scholars such as Manning Marable, Robin Kelley, Mahmoud Mamdani, Edward Said, and Lisa Anderson.^[2] While studying at Columbia, Aidi lived in Harlem and worked in journalism and political analysis.^[2] After completing his PhD in 2002, he worked at the United Nations.^[2] He then lectured at University of Maryland.^[2]

• Aidi, Hisham (2014). Rebel music: race, empire, and the new Muslim youth culture. Islamic studies music. New York: Vintage Books, a division of Random House LLC. ISBN 978-0-307-27997-2.
• Aidi, Hisham (2009). Redeploying the state: corporatism, neoliberalism, and coalition politics. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. ISBN 978-0-230-61159-7. OCLC 226357085.

• Marable, Manning; Aidi, Hisham, eds. (2009). Black routes to Islam. New York, N.Y: Palgrave Macmillan. ISBN 978-1-4039-7781-6.