Salaita won a 2007 Gustavus Myers Outstanding Book Award for writing the book Anti-Arab Racism in the USA: Where It Comes from and What it Means for Politics Today. The Gustavus Myers Center for the Study of Bigotry and Human Rights recognized Salaita's book as one that extends "our understanding of the root causes of bigotry and the range of options we as humans have in constructing alternative ways to share power." Miriam Cooke, professor at Duke University, described the book as "a sobering analysis of anti-Arab racism, from neo-conservative to liberal, rooted in America's settler colonial past and seeping into every corner of our lives.