ABSTRACT
In the immediate aftermath of the U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq, hundreds of scientists and academics were murdered and others fled, seeking refuge abroad. Amid an environment of intense and increasingly sectarian conflict, the violence against scholars followed no discernible pattern – individuals of various ranks, fields, and sectarian groups were targeted. Furthermore, individual attacks were unclaimed and unattributable. This research finds that in Iraq, epistemological spaces became highly contested when the United States occupying authorities (1) removed Ba’ath party leaders from most political spaces, leaving universities untouched, and (2) empowered ethno-sectarian divisions. In doing so, the United States made the university one of the only remaining obstacles to sectarian state-making. Sectarian groups, threatened by the epistemological center of secular knowledge and socialization, saw the academy as a territory to be claimed and dominated in the conflict. Armed militias attacked, eliminating the vanguard before entrenching sectarian interests within the universities. Violence against the academics thus was part of a broader campaign to eliminate secularism in Iraq and redefine the state along sectarian lines.
