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. Together with his wife, the sociologist
Janet Abu-Lughod, he worked to establish a Palestinian Open University as "a means of educating a scattered nation." The project was supported by
UNESCO. The program was aborted by the
1982 Israeli invasion of Lebanon, however the groundwork conducted by the Abu-Lughods formed the basis of demographic research on the Palestinian people. 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. ==Statesman==