Letter about the Targeted Killing of Academics in Lebanon

Volker Turk

UN High Commissioner for Human Rights 

 

Jürg Lauber

President, UN Human Rights Council

 

Khaled El-Enany

Director-General, United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO)

 

Farida Shaheed

UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Education

 

Kaja Kallas

High Representative of the European Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy

 

Marco Rubio 

United States Secretary of State and National Security Advisor

 

Your Excellencies, High Representative, Special Rapporteur, and Mr. Secretary:

 

We write on behalf of the Committee on Academic Freedom of the Middle East Studies Association of North America (MESA) to condemn in the strongest possible terms the killing of Dr. Hussein Bazzi, Dean of the Faculty of Sciences at the Lebanese University’s Rafik Hariri Campus in Hadath, and Dr. Mortada Srour, Professor of Chemistry and Physics at the same institution, in an Israeli drone strike on 12 March 2026. The deliberate targeting of an educational institution in order to kill members of its academic staff is a gross violation of international law and basic norms of state conduct even under conditions of war. It demonstrates, as well, a blatant disregard of states’ obligations under international humanitarian law to protect scholars, students, and institutions of higher education.

 

MESA was founded in 1966 to promote scholarship and teaching on the Middle East and North Africa. The preeminent organization in the field, MESA publishes the International Journal of Middle East Studies and has close to 2800 members worldwide. MESA is committed to ensuring academic freedom and freedom of expression both within the region and in connection with the study of the region in North America and elsewhere.

 

Dr. Hussein Bazzi, 38, held a doctorate in chemistry and materials physics from Pierre and Marie Curie University in Paris. He began teaching and conducting research in the Faculty of Sciences at the Lebanese University – Lebanon’s only public university -- in 2013 and was appointed dean of the faculty in 2023.  Dr. Mortada Srour was a physicist and the author of multiple peer-reviewed scientific papers. The Israeli military has claimed that Dr. Bazzi was affiliated with an ally of Iran and was exploiting his scientific expertise for military purposes. At the time of their deaths, both men were in the courtyard of their campus; they were leaving a meeting they had convened to organize remote access to education for Lebanese University students displaced or endangered by the current conflict. In other words, they were killed while doing the work of teachers: trying to ensure their students’ learning during a war. Moreover, these killings form part of a pattern that requires urgent international attention.

 

We are deeply alarmed by the targeted killing of academic faculty while they were, as civilians, carrying out their pedagogical duties. Any purported justification based on the claim that their scientific expertise made them a legitimate target, if normalized, would strip all scientists, engineers, chemists, and physicists in conflict zones of the protected civilian status to which they are entitled under international humanitarian law. Academic knowledge is not, by definition, a weapon. Scholarship in the natural sciences serves students, communities, and the advancement of human understanding. The logic that any scientist may be targeted because their expertise could theoretically serve military purposes has no limiting principle, and if accepted, it would render every research university in a conflict zone a lawful target. We reject that logic.

 

These killings do not occur in isolation. Since 7 October 2023, MESA and its Committee on Academic Freedom have documented and condemned the systematic decimation of the Palestinian educational sector in Gaza: the killing of thousands of students and hundreds of faculty and educational staff, and the destruction of all twelve of Gaza’s universities (see our letters dated: 25 January 2024; 21 November 2023). Scholars have named this campaign scholasticide: the deliberate and systematic destruction of educational institutions, scholarly communities, and the intellectual and cultural life they sustain. Israel also has an established record of engaging in targeted killings of Iranian scientists outside of, and of course during an armed conflict, as in the most recent assassination, on 23 March 2026, of Dr. Saeed Shamghadri, an associate professor of electrical engineering at Iran University of Science and Technology, at his home in Tehran.  In several instances, professors of engineering and physics who were not connected to military or weapons programs in Iran were killed on the grounds that their expertise was “dual use” thereby making them targets. Again, there can be no limiting principle to such arguments purporting to justify the killing of civilian scientists on university campuses or in their homes and neighborhoods. All of these practices are part of a pattern by Israeli forces to target educational sites across the region. The killing of Drs. Bazzi and Srour represents the extension of this pattern to Lebanon and to that country’s civilian academic infrastructure.[1] The Lebanese University is not a political institution or a military site. It is a public university that serves tens of thousands of Lebanese students—students of every sect, region, and political background—and it is the educational cornerstone of a society already under enormous strain from years of continuous Israeli attacks, economic crisis and political paralysis. Attacks upon the university are attacks on Lebanon’s civilian future.

 

The killing of professors on a university campus (or in their home) constitutes a violation of fundamental principles of international humanitarian law. As Israel’s conduct in Lebanon falls under the laws of armed conflict, its forces are bound by the principle of distinction—the obligation to distinguish between combatants and civilians—and by the principle of proportionality. Political views or affiliation with a Lebanese political party or movement are not a basis to transform a civilian academic into a lawful military target under international humanitarian law. We further note that the right to education is affirmed as binding under all circumstances by Article 26 of the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights and Article 13 of the 1966 International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, including during armed conflict. 

 

We therefore call upon international and regional organizations and actors to condemn this egregious violation of the law of armed conflict by the government of Israel and demand the immediate cessation of such deliberate attacks on educational institutions and targeted killings of scholars in Lebanon and throughout the region. As a signatory to related conventions, Israel must be compelled by the states and institutions that have influence over its policies to abide by its obligations under international humanitarian law to protect scholars, students and the institutions of higher learning where they work and study. In addition, we urge international and regional organizations and actors to insist upon the immediate cessation of the US and Israel-initiated war on Iran (and its allies) that is continuing to imperil educators and educational institutions and causing unimaginable harm and suffering to the peoples of the region. We appeal to you to intercede without further delay in encouraging an end to this terrible war. 

 

Sincerely,

 

Ussama Makdisi

MESA President

Professor, University of California, Berkeley 

 

Judith E. Tucker
Chair, Committee on Academic Freedom
Professor Emerita, Georgetown University

 

Cc

 

Thomas Fletcher, Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator of UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs

Roberta Metsola, President of the European Parliament

David McAllister, Chair of the European Parliament Committee on Foreign Affairs

Mounir Satouri, Chair of European Parliament Subcommittee on Human Rights

Viktor Almqvist, Press Officer for the Committee on Foreign Affairs and Subcommittee on Human Rights of the European Parliament

Ursula von der Leyen, President of European Commission

Hélène Le Gal, Managing Director for the Middle East and North Africa, European Union, External Action Service (EEAS)

Michael O'Flaherty, Commission for Human Rights of Council of Europe 

Joseph Aoun, President of Lebanon  

Donald J. Trump, President of the United States

Pete Hegseth, U.S. Secretary of Defense

Dorothy Shea, Acting Representative of the United States to the UN

Ahmed Abul Gheit, Secretary-General of the League of Arab States

Brad Marston, President, American Physical Society      

Scientists for Palestine 

International Union of Scientists

 

[1] We have learned that another academic, the historian Dr. Mohammed Rida Fadlallah, President of the University of Sciences and Arts (USAL), was killed in Israel’s strikes on Beirut’s southern suburbs at the beginning of March. However, it has not been suggested that he was targeted.