Birzeit was established as a school in 1924 by Nabiha Nasir (1891-1951) to provide educational opportunities to the children of Birzeit town and its surrounding villages. In 1953, as a college, Birzeit began to offer first-year university-level courses in Arts and Science. By 1961, Birzeit College was offering second-year classes, and by the following year, associate degrees were granted for the two-year course, enabling students to transfer to other universities in the Arab World and elsewhere to complete their first degree courses.
In 1967, Israel occupied the Palestinian West Bank and Gaza Strip, thus heralding the beginning of travel restrictions for Palestinians in these areas. This year, the high school programme at Birzeit was eliminated and the college began to focus on the university-level courses. By 1972, the college began a four-year programme leading to Bachelors' degrees in Arts and Sciences. As the college became a university, the founders formed an autonomous board of trustees in 1973 that assumed full responsibility for the institution.
In 1975, Birzeit officially adopted the name "Birzeit University", after the addition of an academic senior year. In 1976 the university became a member of the Association of Arab Universities and subsequently held its first graduation ceremony on 11 July 1976. Birzeit was accepted into the International Association of Universities the following year. 1978 marked the addition of a Faculty of Commerce and Economics and, in 1979, the university opened its Faculty of Engineering, giving the university the four faculties it still has today.
Just as the development of the university programme was nearing completion, Israel closed the campus of Birzeit by military order for two weeks in December 1973, the first of many repressive measures against the academic community. Just under a year later, Israel deported university president Dr. Hanna Nasir. Dr. Nasir remained in exile for 19 years.
The second closure of Birzeit University took place for a week in 1979. In the decade 1982-1992, the university was closed 60% of the time. The 15th and most recent closure lasted for 51 months, from 8 January 1988 until 29 April 1992. During this period, the university continued to operate underground with small study groups. Despite the commitment to education by both faculty and students during this period, access to library services and laboratories was limited. Many students thus needed as long as 10 years to complete their four-year degree courses.
Today, although serious violations of human rights and academic freedom still continue in the post-Oslo period, the existing departments and programmes of the university are flourishing, while the university continues to expand in new and creative ways to meet the needs of the emerging Palestinian State.