Scholasticide and Population Health in the Eastern Mediterranean

The systematic destruction of academic infrastructure, termed scholasticide, has been normalised ‎across the Eastern Mediterranean Region (EMR) over more than two decades. The doctrine has ‎operated through two coexisting modalities: the targeted assassination of individual scholars and ‎the physical destruction of institutions, escalating in scale from selective killings and partial ‎looting to the dismantling of entire academic systems. Drawing on evidence from several EMR ‎countries, we describe a causal cascade through which acute military strikes and chronic ‎structural exclusion, including sanctions, platform over-compliance, and visa barriers, produce ‎generational health workforce depletion, disrupt core public health functions, and cause population-‎level health harms. We argue that academic institutions constitute a distinct, upstream structural ‎determinant of population health whose destruction is an attack on health systems, not merely on ‎education. We propose five categories of action, implemented through standing regional and ‎international mechanisms, to protect academic infrastructure across the EMR whenever and ‎wherever it is attacked‎.