Osama Al-Shoumri is a researcher and human rights advocate focusing on academic freedom, minority rights and social resilience in conflict zones. As a direct witness to the academic environment in Syria, he documents patterns of discrimination and supports displaced and at-risk students from southern Syria. Facebook |X
I still remember the last time I saw my friend and roommate, Hadi,* a fifth-year electrical engineering student from southern Syria's Suwayda Governorate. Since our first year at Damascus University, we shared a dorm room, navigating exams, long nights of study and daily student life. Hadi was committed to completing his degree, despite the mounting pressures surrounding us before and after former dictator Bashar al-Assad's fall in December 2024.
In July 2025, those pressures erupted into targeted threats. Following Israeli strikes on Damascus in response to violence in Suwayda, Druze students became direct targets of sectarian incitement. Online posts accused us of treason, as other posts and messages doxxing Druze students in a Damascus University official campus group and in WhatsApp channels like one roughly named "Expose the Traitors" depict. According to student testimonies collected between July and August 2025 from Damascus University, dormitories were stormed, personal belongings seized and students branded "traitors." Hadi's laptop was confiscated by a student known as "Abu Ahmad," who appeared in a video declaring jihad against Druze peers.
Determined to reclaim his property, Hadi left a temporary shelter in Jaramana to return to campus on July 18. He never returned. His phone went silent. He missed work at his night-shift job. Neither friends nor university administrators could locate him.
Hadi's disappearance is emblematic of a broader pattern: Universities, which should be safe spaces for learning, have become arenas of fear, where sectarian violence thrives unchecked.
Hadi's disappearance is emblematic of a broader pattern: Universities, which should be safe spaces for learning, have become arenas of fear, where sectarian violence thrives unchecked.
- Osama Al-Shoumri
Hadi's case reflects a wider, systematic targeting of Druze students across Syrian campuses. In April 2025, University of Aleppo student Adham was stabbed on campus by classmates motivated solely by sectarian hatred. Subsequent clashes erupted at Damascus University's al-Hamak dormitory, where mobs chanted extremist slogans such as "Khaybar, Khaybar, Oh Jews, Mohammad's army will return." This chant is a medieval battle-cry that, in this context, was repurposed to brand Druze students as "Zionists" and "traitors," aiming to incite violence and threats against Druze students.
In a similar incident to Adham's stabbing, and according to multiple local witnesses who spoke with this author anonymously to protect their identity, nearly 100 students attempted to lynch another student—Obada—in Dormitory Unit 17 in mid-July. Security forces intervened, although not to protect but to arrest Obada himself, leaving attackers unpunished.
Hadi's experience followed a similar trajectory as Obada and other students: dormitories were raided, jihad declarations filmed and personal belongings seized as administrators failed to intervene. His disappearance on July 18 underscores the systematic denial of minority students' rights to safe education.
In Suwayda, Mazraa University was deliberately burned during the Ministry of Defense's latest assault—a deliberate attack on educational infrastructure. Similarly, across Homs, Latakia and Aleppo, dormitories became hubs for mob assaults, sectarian demonstrations and recruitment drives.
This pattern extends beyond physical violence. At Damascus University, a female Druze student was subjected to blackmail based on false accusations, according to anonymous local sources. Peers threatened to publicly spread these false accusations unless she abandoned her studies. Similarly, Tishreen University saw the arbitrary detention of dozens of Druze students, according to anonymous sources who spoke with this author to protect their identity. They were later released through prisoner exchange deals, reducing them to political hostages.
As a student from Suwayda who shared classrooms and dormitories with peers now disappeared, I carry the weight of their absence.
- Osama Al-Shoumri
Collectively, these incidents demonstrate the weaponization of sectarianism on university campuses. Spaces meant for learning have become arenas for sectarian incitement, with collusion or inaction from both university authorities and state security forces creating a pervasive environment of intimidation and exclusion.
The cumulative harm affects not only individuals but an entire generation of Druze and minority students. Hadi's disappearance stripped him of life, liberty and education. Obada's attempted lynching exemplified the lethal consequences of unchecked incitement. Female students faced targeted campaigns to harm their reputation, highlighting the deeper layers of discrimination and sexism at play. All are intended to coerce and remove minority students from Syria's secondary education system.
Arbitrary detention at Tishreen University illustrates another dimension of harm, with students treated as bargaining chips, deprived of legal protections and academic continuity. The burning of Mazraa University signals that neither institutions nor individuals are safe from reprisals.
As a result, higher education has been transformed into a landscape of fear for Druze and other minority students. Universities, intended as spaces of knowledge, have become mechanisms of exclusion—driving young people from campuses, communities and, in many cases, into disappearance or silence.
Campus-based violence extends beyond university walls, serving as a recruitment pipeline for extremist organizations. Students previously involved in dormitory assaults later participated in massacres and armed operations. Abbas Khaswani of Homs University is implicated in leading mob attacks against Druze peers on campus and subsequently joined the March 2025 Latakia massacres against Alawites. Similarly, two students from the Syrian Private University participated in the April 2025 Sahnaya massacres.
Ahmad Hmeidān, a computer engineering student, openly boasted via dormitory communication channels about joining "mujahideen," a term for those fighting jihad in the name of Islam, operating heavy weaponry and dehumanizing Druze civilians. These examples illustrate how campuses have become militarized, with extremist identity replacing an inclusive academic identity.
State strategies have played a role. Authorities tolerated or endorsed preliminary mobilization on campuses, meaning the deliberate courting and organization of supportive student blocs—particularly Sunni students—to generate loyalty, amplify sectarian fervor and prepare social and ideological backing prior to and during military operations in Suwayda. University demonstrations, pro-government chants and attacks against Druze peers show that campuses became integral nodes in the conflict, supplying both manpower and ideological legitimacy to hateful factions undergirding the transitional authority in Damascus.
These incidents constitute a systematic campaign of persecution against Druze students on sectarian grounds. Enforced disappearance, arbitrary detention, collective incitement and denial of safe access to education qualify as crimes against humanity under Article 7 of the Rome Statute. Collusion by university administrations and security forces demonstrates that these violations stem from institutional environments—not isolated actors.
As a student from Suwayda who shared classrooms and dormitories with peers now disappeared, I carry the weight of their absence. Hadi's story, alongside Obada, Adham and others, illustrates the cost Druze students pay for pursuing education in today's Syria.
International mechanisms must urgently respond. Policymakers and international bodies should recognize the targeting of Druze and other minority students as crimes against humanity and activate accountability mechanisms, including independent U.N. investigations and fact-finding missions. Human rights organizations must document cases and provide legal support to survivors and families, bolstering international mechanisms.
Academic institutions and non-governmental organizations should establish protective coalitions, ensuring universities remain spaces of learning, rather than recruitment grounds for sectarian violence, offering scholarships and relocation pathways for threatened students. Similarly, universities around the globe should strengthen solidarity with Syrian students, adopting policies defending academic freedom, monitoring violations and refusing complicity with authoritarian repression.
Despite the darkness, education in Syria can be reclaimed. If international actors heed the voices of students in exile and solidarity replaces silence, Syrian universities may once again become spaces of learning—where no student fears for their life because of their identity.
* Name changed to protect identity.
