This paper analyzes Palestinian students, teachers and professors who found themselves suddenly stateless as they were living, working and studying abroad in 1948. Their stories highlight diaspora as a process of decolonization, while underscoring the global effects of 1948 on an individual, day-to-day level. A different segment of Palestinian society than the more often discussed refugee camp population, these individuals were almost all from middle class or wealthy families. Many of them enjoyed illustrious careers, receiving their education in Beirut, the United Kingdom, and the United States while staffing and shaping education systems throughout the world, particularly in Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon and Kuwait. Students, teachers, and intellectuals more broadly are seldom analyzed within narratives of victimization or resistance, as they suffered less material deprivations and were frequently not part of armed rebellions. Yet, scholarship students, teachers and professors suffered from uncertainty in terms of their employment, lack of citizenship rights, and the inability to return home to their families that remained in Israel. They also played a key role in the literary and cultural reconfigurations of what it meant to be Arab,and Palestinian both before and after 1948. These Palestinians could write and organize from the diaspora, as part of a variety of political and social movements, even as they experienced the consequences of occupation and statelessness across national borders. Using oral histories, memoirs, novels, poetry, as well as journals, alumni records, and official materials from archives in the United States, United Kingdom, Lebanon, Jordan, Israel, and Palestine, this paper explores the experience and consequences of 1948 from beyond the borders of Israel/Palestine. I begin this paper in 1940, after the Great Revolt and during a period of expanding education within the Mandate for Palestine, and the Arab world as a whole. A new push towards educating Palestinians by the Mandate government, local initiatives and the British Council meant that more students were supported in their study abroad. With 1948, many educated Palestinians sought and found employment in universities throughout the Arab world and beyond. I end this paper in 1958, allowing me to explore regional political upheavals and the consequences of 1948 for these teachers, students and professors, as well as their families within a global framework. Their stories underscore the need to address the myriad processes of decolonization beyond merely colonial polities and the regimes which succeeded them.