Sadiq Jalal Al-Azm (Arabic: صادق جلال العظم‎) (born in Damascus, Syria, in 1934) is a Professor Emeritus of Modern European Philosophy at the University of Damascus in Syria. He has been a visiting professor in the department of Near Eastern Studies at Princeton University until 2007. His area of specialization was the philosophy of Immanuel Kant with a more current emphasis upon the Islamic world and its relationship to the West, and he has contributed to the discourse of "Orientalism".[citation needed] He is also known as a human rights advocate and a champion of intellectual freedom and free speech.[1] Al-Azm was schooled in Beirut, Lebanon earning the B.A. in Philosophy from the American University of Beirut (1957). Al-Azm earned the M.A. (1959) and Ph.D. (1961) from Yale University majoring in Modern European Philosophy. He won the Erasmus Prize, with Fatema Mernissi and Abdulkarim Soroush. In 2004, he also received the Dr. Leopold-Lucas-Preis of the Evangelical-Theological Faculty of the University of Tűbingen. In 2005 he became a Dr. Honoris Causa at Hamburg University.