After a brief period working in Abu Dhabi, Nusseibeh took up doctoral studies on the topic of Islamic Philosophy at from Harvard University, beginning in the fall of 1974, and gained his Ph.D. in (1978).[1][23] He returned to the West Bank in 1978 to teach at Birzeit University (where he remained as Professor of Philosophy until the University was closed from 1988 to 1990 during the First Intifada). At the same time, he taught classes in Islamic philosophy at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, Israel. Through the early 1980s, he helped to organize the teachers' union at Birzeit, and served three terms as president of the union of faculty and staff there.