The unprecedented attack on southern Israel by the militant Islamist group Hamas on 7 October 2023 triggered the war in the Gaza Strip. Gaza is the smaller of the two Palestinian territories and is ruled by Hamas. In retaliation, Israel attacked Gaza with the declared aim of eradicating Hamas. Since the beginning of the Israel-Hamas war, more than 40,000 people are reported to have been killed: 41,431 Palestinians and 1,706 Israelis. Israel has also been accused of deliberately targeting universities and academics in Gaza as part of a strategy branded “educide”.
In response to the Israeli attack on Gaza, Hezbollah (Lebanese Shia Muslim political party and armed group) fired on Israeli positions, in solidarity with the Palestinians. Since then, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) have retaliated with air strikes, tank and artillery fire against Hezbollah positions in Lebanon. Since 20 September 2024, the IDF has carried out hundreds of air strikes in Lebanon as part of a new offensive operation.
More than 560 people have been killed from Israeli bombings in Lebanon since 23 September 2024—including Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah—giving the country its highest daily death toll since the end of the 1975-90 civil war. Among the dead were university students. Abbas Al-Halabi, Lebanon’s caretaker Minister of Education and Higher Education, announced the closure of all state and private universities in southern Lebanon on 23 September, and in the entire country later in the week. The extension of the closure until 6 October was announced last Saturday.
The American University of Beirut (AUB) has suspended all educational activities but has allowed access to its libraries, workspaces, meeting rooms, research labs, and athletic facilities. The Provost’s announcement reads: “The mission of the American University of Beirut is to educate, heal, and serve. Current circumstances have strengthened our resolve to continue to deliver on this mission.”
Founded in 1866 as a medical college, AUB is an inter-ethnic and inter-religious academic institution based on the American liberal arts model of higher education. During the Second World War, soldiers of the Polish II Corps—who, after being evacuated from the USSR, crossed the Middle East to defeat the Axis powers in Italy—became acquainted with the AUB. After the war, it inspired them to create an American university in Western Europe to save central and eastern European intelligentsia from the destructive consequences of sovietisation. Joseph Czapski, on behalf of the Polish exile group Kultura, wrote to the American intellectual James Burnham on 23 September 1948:
“(…) This is what gave us the idea for an American University in Europe for displaced youth and for those fleeing from behind the Iron Curtain. Allow me to send you the project. I will not forget the impression I had when I left Soviet Russia and discovered an admirable and exemplary American hospital in Mashhad on the border of Afghanistan, but even more, we admired the American University in Beirut where Arabs, Jews, and Poles could study freely. Remember that Central Europe is moving towards barbarization. All the elites were massacred or deported by either the Germans or Russians, and the youth who are eager to learn only receive an education distorted by Soviet propaganda.”
This American university would become later the Free Europe University in Exile (1951-1958). For further reading on this, here is my article.
Veronika Durin-Hornyik, PhD
OpenEdition suggests that you cite this post as follows:
Veronika Durin-Hornyik (September 30, 2024). Lebanon’s universities during the Israel-Hamas war and the American University of Beirut. University in Exile Research Project. Retrieved April 23, 2025 from https://doi.org/10.58079/12dzt