His academic work in particular, according to Rashid Khalidi, has played a key role in shaping both Palestinian and broader Arab reactions to the loss of Palestine, and in outlining ways for the former to ensure that they remain visible as a presence within the Middle East map.

His step mother, Anbara Salam Khalidi (4 August 1897–May 1986), was a Lebanese feminist, translator and author, who significantly contributed to the emancipation of Arab women.

He then taught at the Faculty of Oriental Studies in Oxford, until he resigned, after the trilateral British, French and Israeli assault on Egypt in 1956, to take up teaching at the American University of Beirut.

In the 50s he wrote 2 essays on Abd al-Ghani al-Nabulsi, a Syrian Sufi scholar who had written on tolerance, and who practiced this in regard to Jews and Christians he encountered.

[8][9] Khalidi wrote in Foreign Affairs in 1988: "A Palestinian state in the occupied territories within the 1967 frontiers in peaceful coexistence alongside Israel is the only conceptual candidate for a historical compromise of this century-old conflict.

"[10] Khalidi was a Palestinian representative to the Joint Palestinian–Jordanian delegation to the Middle East peace talks launched at the Madrid Conference, prior to the Oslo Agreements.

[12] Moshe Brawer, professor of geography at Tel Aviv University wrote that Khalidi's encyclopedic work All that Remains suffers from "inadequate field research."