Dispatch
How do universities deal with times of conflict?
The conflict in Iran has put both indirect and direct strains on universities in the region. But learnings from the past are helping them navigate.
By Nick Harland
Dispatch
How do universities deal with times of conflict?
The conflict in Iran has put both indirect and direct strains on universities in the region. But learnings from the past are helping them navigate.
By Nick Harland
"We've continued to act out of an abundance of caution, and our priority in every decision is the safety of our students, faculty and staff."
“It certainly has some echoes of the COVID-19 pandemic, when many of the same measures were enacted at schools all over the world.”
"What may be of more concern to universities is longer-term damage to the Middle East’s reputation.”
In brief
- Universities in the Middle East have activated emergency protocols following regional airstrikes, shifting thousands of students to online learning as the sector navigates threats to campus safety.
- Institutions are applying critical lessons from the pandemic, leveraging global "parent campus" expertise in psychology and crisis communication to support students.
- The long-term goal is safeguarding institutional reputation, with leaders banking on regional resilience and a "strong comeback" to maintain international student recruitment once stability is fully restored.
28 February 2026 had been an unassuming Saturday in Dubai. The malls were full of shoppers, the beaches were full of loungers, and the streets were full of traffic. But everything changed after Israel and the United States launched airstrikes on Iran, killing Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and inflicting civilian casualties.
Iran soon retaliated, attacking US allies in the Middle East with airstrikes – including the UAE. It meant that UAE residents received a message that day warning them of a ”potential missile threat” and to “seek immediate shelter”. Soon after, Dubai International Airport was hit by Iranian drones.
Suddenly, a place which had earned a reputation as a safe and welcoming destination for people from all over the world was under threat. It meant that the region’s universities had to respond to keep students and staff safe.
But what actually happens within universities at times like these?
The emergency measures enacted
Professor Yusra Mouzughi is the Provost of University of Birmingham Dubai; the first UK Russell Group university to establish a campus in Dubai. Professor Mouzughi says these are "unprecedented times in the region”.
"As a global institution these are things that are always on our radar, but thankfully we've never had to enact any of the emergency response mechanisms that we've always had in place,” she says.
Professor Mouzughi explains how Birmingham Dubai had a range of measures in place pre-conflict, including a risk register, emergency response plan, business continuity plan and communications strategy.
The university’s first response to the conflict was to hold an emergency meeting with response teams across both campuses. Then, they “made sure we knew who was where, and that they were safe.” Dubai is an international place, with 90 percent of the population born overseas, meaning each Birmingham Dubai student will have received differing advice from their home country. Many will have been advised to leave the UAE. Many did.
Even though plenty of students remained in the region, the decision was soon made to move all classes online. It was a decision echoed at other universities in the Middle East.
"In view of the direct threats made to American-affiliated institutions, and numerous other conditions, we decided at the end of March to commit to the availability of online education at AUS for the remainder of the semester,” says Tod A. Laursen, Chancellor of the American University of Sharjah.
He explains how the school has been ”extending online instruction in one to two week increments”, in order to ”give our community as much notice as we could of changes of modality if circumstances changed”. By necessity, long-term planning had given way to week-by-week decision making.
New York University Abu Dhabi was another American-affiliated institution forced to close its doors in light of the conflict. "We've continued to act out of an abundance of caution, and our priority in every decision is the safety of our students, faculty and staff,” says Wiley Norvell, the university’s Senior Vice President for University Relations and Public Affairs. Their campus has been closed, classes moved online, and any students or staff residing on campus have been relocated.
Learning from the past to deal with the present
Yet these decisions weren’t made in isolation, with the Ministry of Education in the UAE mandating that all learning move online. If a university did want to return to in-person classes, they would have to send an application to the Ministry for approval which must include a detailed safety plan.
It’s just one element of a complicated situation for higher education in the region. Their autonomy has been (somewhat) taken away, forward planning is extremely difficult, and normal campus life has been disrupted.
It certainly has some echoes of the COVID-19 pandemic, when many of the same measures were enacted at schools all over the world. Professor Mouzughi acknowledges that the university has been taking learnings from the pandemic years to apply to the current situation.
“ Whilst we were in operation here in Dubai during COVID, the bigger lessons learned were in the University of Birmingham because it's much larger and has lots more students. And so those lessons learned and the policies that were developed have come in useful now.”
Communication is another pressing challenge for schools in the Middle East. Both what you communicate and how you communicate with students has suddenly become much more important. "What you don't want to do is communicate every day to say nothing,” says Professor Mouzughi. What started out as daily alerts at Birmingham Dubai have since moved to weekly updates. "It's about establishing standards and patterns that give people a sense of stability and continuity."
One unique aspect of higher education in the Middle East is the abundance of foreign campuses. The likes of Carnegie Mellon and Northwestern have a presence in Qatar, NYU and Birmingham are in the UAE, whilst various universities including Arizona State University and IE University are planning branch campuses in Saudi Arabia.
For the ones that are already here, it means they can call upon the support of their parent campus. And that can benefit schools in more ways than might be expected.
For instance, Professor Mouzughi explains how the Dubai campus has called upon the expertise of Birmingham’s psychology department to learn how people respond in times of stress. This collaboration has led to the development of breathing exercises and coping routines that can be passed on to students. And with the sound of planes and drones overhead a near daily occurrence in the region, they’re also helping students cope with heightened responses to outside noise.
A return to normality?
That’s the present situation in the region, but there are signs that the worst may be behind them. A tentative ceasefire was agreed on 8th April, with the region’s universities hoping to return to some form of normality soon. Understandably, that will be a challenge in the short-term. However, Professor Mouzughi says that the region’s response to other serious situations, such as the financial crisis and COVID-19 pandemic, gives her hope for the future.
"The comeback [in the UAE] every time has been so strong and so positive,” she says. “I genuinely don't think it'll be any different on this occasion."
Still, she concedes that the longer this conflict drags on, the harder that comeback will be. Student intake for the next academic year will be particularly affected, but what may be of more concern to universities is longer-term damage to the Middle East’s reputation. As the old saying goes, it takes years to build a reputation – and minutes to ruin it.
But Professor Mouzughi believes that the region's confident, assured response will help protect that hard-earned reputation for safety and security. "Dubai has done an immense job of protecting its citizens, residents and visitors. And I think that's important to recognise."
The conflict has come at a time when more and more Western universities are seriously considering launching a branch campus in the region. Whether this conflict puts pay to those plans remains to be seen, but Professor Mouzughi is hopeful that things will soon return to the way they were before the bombs fell.
“It will bounce back,” she says. “That’s my bet.”