Across the Middle East, universities are increasingly being repurposed to serve military and political agendas, raising concerns about academic freedom. Professor Magdi Tawfik Abdelhamid, from Egypt’s National Research Centre in Cairo, observes that higher education institutions are now often viewed as extensions of national security apparatuses rather than as spaces for open inquiry and knowledge pursuit.
According to Abdelhamid, open debate is being replaced with restrictions for security and political goals, citing examples in Sudan, Libya, Iran, Lebanon, and Iraq. The latest example is in Yemen, where the Iran-backed Houthi movement has launched an ideological and military mobilisation campaign within universities under its control.
Militarisation of Universities in Yemen
A recent report titled “Houthis Intensify Militarisation of Universities and Student Mobilisation” published on the Asharq Al-Awsat site reveals that students, academics, and non-academic staff are being subjected to programmes combining doctrinal indoctrination with field military training. The report is supported by other international, regional, and national reports, including the September 2026 Education Under Attack report published by the Global Coalition to Protect Education from Attack.
The Houthi movement’s intensification of university militarisation came after a major military escalation between the Houthis and the internationally recognised Yemeni government. The conflict has torn the country apart, with the Houthi movement seizing control of the capital, Sana’a, in the northern part of the country.
Universities are being systematically used for recruitment and military training, with academic staff and students coerced into attending military courses and participating in Houthi-sponsored demonstrations.
According to the report, academic freedom is being severely restricted, with mandatory indoctrination sessions imposed across campuses. Those who refuse to comply face expulsion, detention, or other forms of persecution. The document also records cases where university degrees, faculty positions, and student grades are conditioned on participation in military and ideological activities.
Professor Mohamed Almahfali, an associate professor of Arabic Language and Literature at Gothenburg University in Sweden, originally from Yemen, notes that the Houthis’ strategy for militarising universities creates multiple and serious risks, including threatening the safety and security of academics and students, and turning higher educational institutions into tools for military agendas and political propaganda.
Almahfali explains that the continued militarisation deepens the current conflict and “mines the future” of Yemen by adding structural obstacles to recovery, reconstruction, and development. He adds that even if the armed conflict were to end in the short term, long-term consequences for higher education, academic freedom, research, and human capital would remain profound.
Regional Trend
Abdelhamid notes that campus militarisation is not unique to Yemen, but is rising sharply across the Middle East, driven by a volatile mix of severe regional armed conflicts and intense domestic political crackdowns on dissent. In Sudan, Libya, Iran, Lebanon, and Iraq, universities face risks ranging from physical security to restricted academic freedom, impacting research topics, publications, and educational programmes.
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In Sudan, the civil war has caused extensive militarisation, occupation, and destruction of higher-education institutions across the country.
In Libya, the presence of armed groups on university campuses has disrupted learning, turning centres of study into sites of conflict, intimidation, and structural damage.
In Iran, universities have become direct security and military battlegrounds amid domestic protests and the broader US-Israeli conflict. The paramilitary Basij organisation maintains offices inside Iranian universities to control student activism, and the regime has recruited personnel from regional militant networks directly into major universities.
The intersection of higher education and militarisation in Lebanon primarily involves exploitation, occupation, or targeting of academic spaces by domestic political-militant factions and regional conflicts. In Iraq, armed militias and political factions infiltrate higher education to expand ideological influence, secure funding, and recruit students.
He adds that the phenomenon also causes cross-border educational initiatives to be viewed through a geopolitical lens of national security rather than mutual cultural or economic exchange, complicating long-term regional integration and knowledge-economy transitions. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights guarantees the right to education free from coercion, which is being violated in these cases.
According to the Academic Freedom Index 2026 update, Yemen remains in the lower tiers globally regarding the de facto protection of academic freedoms, consistently scoring low on the index.
Several university professors who have refused to comply with these policies have been dismissed, and thousands of students have been deprived of their right to fair and independent education. Female students have also been subjected to compulsory military and ideological courses under the supervision of female Houthi enforcers, aiming to prepare women for ideological mobilisation and potential recruitment into Houthi-controlled security structures.
Consequently, research topics are now scrutinised based on political and religious criteria as much as academic ones.
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