Scholasticide: The Systematic Destruction of Academic Life in Contemporary Armed Conflict

[Heybatollah Najandimanesh, Associate prof. of International Law, Allameh Tabataba’i  Univeristy, Tehran, Iran]

Contemporary armed conflicts increasingly target not only civilians and civilian infrastructure, but also the institutional foundations through which societies preserve, produce, and transmit knowledge. The destruction of centres of learning during war is not a new phenomenon. From the burning of the ancient Library of Alexandria, to the devastation of Baghdad’s scholarly institutions during the Mongol sack of 1258, and the destruction of libraries, mosques, and centres of learning across parts of Iran during the Mongol invasions, to the destruction of European universities and libraries during the Second World War, armed conflict has repeatedly endangered humanity’s intellectual and cultural inheritance. Universities and research institutions in Berlin, Leipzig, Freiburg, and elsewhere suffered extensive destruction during aerial bombardments in World War II, while countless archives, manuscripts, laboratories, and museum collections were permanently lost. More recent conflicts have continued this pattern: universities and libraries were targeted or devastated during the wars in Bosnia, Iraq, Syria, Sudan, Gaza, Ukraine, Lebanon, Yemen, and Iran demonstrating that systems of knowledge production remain acutely vulnerable during hostilities.

In contemporary conflicts, universities, laboratories, libraries, research institutes, and scholarly communities have become recurrent sites of destruction in conflicts ranging from Gaza and Sudan to Ukraine and, more recently, Iran. In the recent hostilities involving Iran, reports indicate extensive damage to universities and scientific research centres, alongside the deaths of students, professors, and researchers. Iranian authorities stated that more than thirty universities and hundreds of schools were damaged during the conflict, while major scientific institutions, including engineering laboratories, biomedical facilities, and high-performance computing centres, were reportedly struck.

International humanitarian law (IHL) protects universities as civilian objects and students, professors, and researchers as civilians unless and for such time as they directly participate in hostilities. However, contemporary patterns of violence reveal a conceptual limitation, as international law tends to assess attacks on educational institutions as isolated incidents rather than as part of broader patterns that may dismantle academic life as a social and institutional system. This post argues that such cumulative patterns may be understood through the concept of scholasticide: the systematic destruction or sustained incapacitation of academic institutions, scholarly communities, and the epistemic infrastructures necessary for the production and transmission of knowledge during armed conflict. The argument is not that scholasticide is a formally codified crime, but that it identifies an emerging category of collective harm not adequately captured by existing frameworks of IHL and international criminal law.

The Incident-Based Logic of Existing IHL

Existing IHL provides substantial protections for educational institutions and academic personnel. Under Article 52 of Additional Protocol I to the Geneva Conventions, civilian objects “shall not be the object of attack.” Universities and research institutions therefore retain civilian protection unless they become lawful military objectives. Article 48 codifies the principle of distinction, while Articles 51 and 57 establish the rules of proportionality and precaution in attack. The Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court criminalizes intentionally directing attacks against civilian objects and launching disproportionate attacks causing excessive civilian harm. These rules remain essential, but they operate primarily through an incident-based framework that evaluates attacks individually. As a result, IHL may not fully capture situations in which multiple attacks collectively undermine the continuity of an entire academic system.

This limitation is increasingly visible in recent conflicts. In Gaza, United Nations experts described the widespread destruction of educational institutions and the killing of academics as “scholasticide,” with reports that every university has been damaged or destroyed and significant losses among students, professors, and administrators. Similar concerns have been raised regarding attacks on universities and scientific institutions in Iran, where advanced research facilities and engineering centres were reportedly targeted. In Ukraine and Sudan, repeated attacks have disrupted higher education and fragmented academic communities. While such incidents may individually constitute IHL violations or war crimes, collectively they may indicate the progressive dismantling of the institutional conditions necessary for intellectual continuity.

Universities as Epistemic Infrastructure

International law correctly treats universities as civilian objects, yet they are more than physical structures. As epistemic infrastructures, they generate scientific knowledge, preserve historical memory, cultivate expertise, and sustain intellectual continuity across generations. Their contributions extend beyond national borders, supporting development, public health, technological innovation, environmental protection, and human welfare. Consequently, their destruction causes harms that reach far beyond material damage. The loss of professors, researchers, laboratories, archives, libraries, and research centres disrupts expertise, institutional memory, scientific progress, and cultural continuity, producing long-term and potentially irreversible consequences for both societies and humanity’s shared knowledge base. This broader dimension of harm may also be understood through the literature on epistemic injustice and epistemic violence. These concepts highlight how harm may occur not only through physical destruction, but also through practices that undermine the production, preservation, and transmission of knowledge. Although developed primarily in contexts of colonialism and structural inequality, they provide a useful lens for understanding how attacks on universities generate not only material damage but also epistemic harm by disrupting the institutional conditions necessary for knowledge creation and  continuity of knowledge.

Recent attacks on universities in Iran illustrate this broader dimension of harm. Reports indicate that strikes damaged high-performance computing centres, plasma and laser laboratories, biomedical research institutes, and engineering facilities associated with some of Iran’s leading universities. Even institutions not directly attacked reportedly faced severe research disruption due to campus closures, internet blackouts, and interruptions to graduate training and laboratory access. Scientists warned of potential loss of irreplaceable specimens and research data. No publicly available evidence shows that the affected universities were directly involved in hostilities, and they therefore retained their presumptive civilian status under IHL despite broader political or strategic narratives.

Such developments demonstrate that contemporary warfare increasingly affects not only civilian populations, but also the institutional ecosystems through which societies reproduce expertise and sustain post-conflict recovery capacity. What is at stake is not solely educational access, but the continuity of knowledge production itself. The destruction of academic systems cannot be reduced to ordinary property damage, as universities are assemblages of intellectual relationships, institutional memory, scientific collaboration, and intergenerational transmission. Their destruction affects the future capacity of societies to govern, innovate, heal, educate, and reconstruct themselves after conflict. Moreover, scientific and scholarly achievements produced within universities constitute not only national assets but part of the shared intellectual heritage of humankind. Scientific discoveries, medical research, cultural archives, and accumulated knowledge benefit humanity as a whole. Attacks on universities and centres of learning may therefore harm not only specific states or populations but also the common heritage and collective epistemic resources of humanity.

Toward the Concept of Scholasticide

The concept of scholasticide seeks to capture this cumulative and systemic form of destruction. The concept also draws on debates concerning epistemic injustice and epistemic violence. Whereas those frameworks focus on the marginalization or suppression of knowledge and knowers, scholasticide highlights the destruction of the institutional infrastructures that make collective knowledge production possible. It may therefore be understood as a conflict-specific form of epistemic violence directed against universities, research centres, libraries, archives, and scholarly communities. Scholasticide may be understood as the systematic destruction or sustained incapacitation of academic institutions, scholarly communities, and knowledge-producing infrastructures during armed conflict.

Importantly, scholasticide should not presently be understood as a distinct autonomous crime under positive international law. Existing treaty law does not recognize it as such. Nor does the concept displace existing legal categories such as war crimes, crimes against humanity, persecution, or genocide. Rather, scholasticide highlights the limitations of assessing attacks on educational systems exclusively through isolated incidents of civilian casualties or property destruction. The concept is particularly useful because it identifies a form of collective harm directed not simply against educational facilities, but against the epistemic continuity of society itself. Contemporary conflicts increasingly involve attacks on information systems, cultural memory, scientific institutions, and intellectual autonomy. Universities occupy a uniquely vulnerable position within this landscape precisely because they function as sites of independent inquiry and critical thought.

Existing ICL partially recognizes aspects of this phenomenon. Attacks on universities may constitute war crimes where civilian educational institutions are intentionally targeted. Widespread or systematic attacks against academic communities may also fall within existing crimes against humanity, including persecution. International criminal jurisprudence has long acknowledged that the destruction of educational and cultural institutions may constitute evidence of discriminatory or genocidal intent. The International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, for example, recognized that the destruction of institutions dedicated to education and culture could amount to persecution where carried out with discriminatory intent. Yet these categories tend to address specific underlying acts rather than the broader destruction of academic ecosystems. Scholasticide seeks to conceptualize this wider phenomenon, focusing not merely on the legality of individual attacks but on the cumulative dismantling of the institutional capacity through which societies generate and preserve knowledge across generations. This distinction becomes particularly important in cases where universities are alleged to possess dual-use or military-related functions. Certain facilities may indeed become lawful military objectives under IHL. However, even where particular strikes satisfy the traditional requirements of distinction and proportionality, international law still lacks a coherent framework for evaluating the cumulative destruction of national scientific and academic systems.

The Destruction of Academic Life as Collective Harm

The value of scholasticide lies less in codification than in its explanatory and normative utility, as it highlights cumulative and intergenerational harm often underemphasized in legal analysis. While IHL traditionally focuses on immediate civilian harm such as deaths, injuries, and physical destruction, the destruction of academic systems can produce long-term consequences for healthcare, governance, scientific development, economic recovery, and cultural continuity. Societies emerging from conflict depend on universities and research institutions for reconstruction and stabilization. Recent conflicts illustrate these effects: in Iran, reports indicate destruction of university facilities, deaths of students and academic personnel, and disruption of educational continuity; in Gaza, universities have been effectively incapacitated. These patterns suggest that contemporary warfare increasingly targets the institutional conditions of intellectual survival, making protection of civilians inseparable from safeguarding the infrastructures of knowledge, expertise, and cultural continuity.

Conclusion

International humanitarian law has long prohibited attacks against civilians and civilian objects, including universities, schools, libraries, and research institutions. Yet contemporary armed conflicts increasingly reveal a deeper and more cumulative form of harm: not merely the destruction of buildings or the incidental loss of civilian life, but the progressive dismantling of the institutional ecosystems through which societies create, preserve, and transmit knowledge across generations. The concept of scholasticide seeks to capture this broader phenomenon. It describes patterns of violence directed against academic institutions, scholarly communities, scientific infrastructures, and intellectual continuity itself. Such harm cannot be adequately understood through the conventional language of isolated property damage or discrete civilian casualties alone. The destruction of universities entails the destruction of research trajectories, mentorship structures, archival memory, scientific collaboration, professional reproduction, and the long-term developmental capacities of societies. In many cases, the full consequences of such destruction emerge only years or decades after the conflict formally ends.

The historical record demonstrates that attacks on centres of learning have repeatedly accompanied projects of domination, ideological transformation, cultural erasure, and political subjugation. From the destruction of libraries and universities in earlier imperial and modern wars to contemporary attacks on academic institutions in Gaza, Sudan, Ukraine, and Iran, armed conflict has repeatedly targeted the intellectual infrastructures upon which collective civilian life depends. What is destroyed in such attacks is not solely educational access, but the capacity of societies to think, innovate, heal, govern, remember, and reconstruct themselves after devastation. This is particularly significant because universities occupy a unique position within human civilization. They are not merely national institutions serving local interests. Scientific knowledge, medical discoveries, technological innovation, and accumulated scholarly learning frequently constitute contributions to humanity as a whole. Academic institutions therefore represent part of the shared intellectual and cultural heritage of humankind. Their destruction impoverishes not only one state or one generation, but potentially the broader human community and future generations yet to come.

Whether scholasticide ultimately develops into a distinct category within international criminal law, emerges as an interpretive framework within existing doctrines of IHL, or remains primarily an analytical concept, the underlying problem can no longer be ignored. Contemporary warfare increasingly threatens the epistemic foundations of civilian society itself. Legal analysis must therefore move beyond viewing attacks on universities as isolated incidents and instead confront the cumulative destruction of academic life as a structural form of harm. Viewed through the lens of epistemic injustice and epistemic violence, such destruction harms not only people and infrastructure but also the conditions necessary for the production, preservation, and transmission of knowledge.

Protecting civilians in armed conflict consequently requires more than safeguarding biological survival alone. It also requires protecting the institutions through which human knowledge, scientific progress, cultural memory, and social recovery become possible. The defence of universities in times of war is therefore not simply a matter of protecting property or education; it is ultimately a matter of protecting humanity’s capacity to preserve civilization itself.

Photo attribution: by Thomas Kelley on Unsplash