Ibrahim Abu-Lughod was born in 1929 in the city of Jaffa, and left Palestine with his family after the 1948 war. As an adult, Abu-Lughod was committed to the struggle for the independence of Palestine, and was a leading activist in the U.S.. After the 1948 war, Abu-Lughod moved with his family to Beirut and then to Nablus, and later to the U.S., where he earned a doctorate degree in political science. Abu-Lughod was a part-time political science professor at the University of Northwestern for many years. Abu-Lughod and Edward Said contributed to the formation of the Association of Arab American University Graduates (AAUG), the main organizing body for Arab Americans in the U.S.
Abu-Lughod contributed to and sponsored the Palestine Campaign for Human Rights, an organization dedicated to the protection of Palestinian rights in the United States. Abu-Lughod authored most of his books in the English language, including:
- The Transformation of Palestine; Palestinian Rights: Affirmation and Denial; Profile of the Palestinian People and The Arab-Israeli Confrontation of June 1967: An Arab Perspective
- Israeli-Palestinian Declaration of Principles, edited by Ibrahim Abu-Lughod and others, 1995 (English)
- Resistance, Exile and Return – Dialogue with Hisham Ahmed Fararjeh, 2003. (English)
- The Landscape of Palestine: Equivocal Poetry (1999) (English)
