Ibrahim Abu-Lughod - Academia

Academia

Returning to North America, he entered a career in academia, serving on the faculties of Smith College (Northampton, Massachusetts) and McGill University, (Montreal) before settling in 1967 at Northwestern University (Evanston, Illinois), where he would remain for 34 years as a professor of political science (and department chair 1985–1988), eventually serving as Director of Graduate Studies and founding Northwestern's Institute of African Studies. During this time he founded the Association of Arab-American University Graduates (1968) and the journal Arab Studies Quarterly (1978), held two more UNESCO posts, one in Beirut and one in Paris. He became a U.S. citizen in 1975. According to Edward Said, Abu-Lughod established a reputation as "the leading Arab academic activist in North America", with "an encyclopaedic knowledge - of the third world, Arab culture, history and language, and the western tradition of rationalism and humane understanding…"

According to Kenneth Janda, "his course on the politics of the Middle East regularly attracted many Jewish students, some of whom enrolled to monitor his lectures. Invariably, they left the class professing admiration for Ibrahim's knowledge and even-handedness in dealing with the difficult political issues in the region." Noted as an orator, he spoke often on behalf of the Palestinian cause, had a strong interest in other liberation movements, and traveled extensively in the Arab world, Asia and Africa.