The Nabeel Abraham papers primarily document Abraham's interest in and research on Arab American and Middle East issues. Also present are records of his time as a student at Wayne State University and the University of Michigan and his career at HFCC.
Nabeel Abraham was born in Charlotte, North Carolina in 1950 to Palestinian immigrant parents. In 1955 his family moved to Detroit, Michigan, home to a large Arab American community. He earned his bachelor's degree in anthropology and sociology from Wayne State University in 1972 and his master's and doctorate degrees in anthropology from the University of Michigan in 1973 and 1978, respectively.
In the years following completion of his doctoral program, Abraham engaged in a variety of positions. These included teaching at the University of Algiers, directing projects focused on outreach and services in the Arab community and the development of curriculum materials and teacher training on Arabic culture and history and Arab American heritage, and serving as executive director of the Association of Arab-American University Graduates (AAUG) and consultant to the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC).
After working as a visiting lecturer at the University of Michigan in 1984, Abraham was hired as an anthropology instructor at Henry Ford Community College (HFCC) in Dearborn in 1985. His courses included Introduction to Anthropology, Ethnology of North America, and Peoples and Cultures of the Middle East and North Africa. In 1996, he became director of HFCC's Honors Program and proceeded to redesign the program and its curriculum. While continuing to teach one anthropology course per semester, his duties included recruiting freshmen to the program, advising honors students and helping them with the transition to four-year colleges and universities, and coordinating the work of the honors faculty. Abraham retired in 2013.
In addition to his daily work at HFCC, Abraham wrote and spoke extensively on Arab American and Middle East issues. He edited and contributed to several books, wrote many papers and articles for presentations at conferences and inclusion in encyclopedias and publications such as Lies of Our Times and Middle East Report, and gave talks on these issues in many different venues.
