Final Years
In 1991, having resigned from the PNC, his American citizenship allowed him to return to his homeland for the first time since 1948. During the last decade of his life he was a professor and vice-president of Bir Zeit University on the West Bank, where the university credit him with being "a pioneering champion" in establishing the faculty of graduate studies. "Palestinian society today needs a higher level of competence and specialization which is achievable only through education at the graduate level," he wrote. "We cannot depend on the achievements of other societies; we Palestinians need to generate our own specialists on the ground." During this time he was also founder of the Independent Commission for Citizens' Rights, the Centre for Curricular Reform, and the Qattan Cultural Centre in Ramallah.
Deborah J. Gerner writes that "…he was critical of the ossification of the Palestinian bureaucracy that he observed in the years following the Oslo accords and deeply troubled by the autocratic elements within the government. Yet he never gave up working for a free, independent, and democratic Palestine." He died of a lung disease in Ramallah, aged 72, and was buried in the family plot in Jaffa. Bir Zeit University honored him posthumously, naming the Ibrahim Abu-Lughod Institute of International Studies after him.
Read more about this topic: Ibrahim Abu-Lughod
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