[5] He completed high school in March 1948, after which he volunteered to work for the National Committee in Jaffa to discourage residents from leaving the city in the face of what Jamal R. Nassar describes as "Zionist assaults."
[1][3][6][7] 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.
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…"[8] 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.
"[9] 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.
Said would write in his obituary for Abu-Lughod, "We told him that the Palestinian people were prepared to coexist with Israel if their self-determination was insured by a Middle East peace plan.
[6][7][10] 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.