Solidarity with Professor Joseph Daher

Heckle sends solidarity to Swiss-Syrian academic and activist Professor Joseph Daher, who has lost his job with the University of Lausanne (UNIL) as a result of his support for Palestine. We reproduce below the text of a petition launched by his UNIL colleagues in February. We encourage university students and faculty in Scotland to speak up in defence of Professor Daher and all academics victimised for Palestine solidarity.

We offer our support and full solidarity to our colleague Prof. Joseph Daher, victim of an arbitrary procedure on the part of the UNIL rectorate: the alleged non-renewal of his contract (signed in May 2024) as a Visiting Professor for the spring semester 2025. This sudden, unjustified and unfounded position deprives his students of his teaching at UNIL, despite the fact that his seminar course entitled “History of International Relations Post-1945” has been on the syllabus for months. Students working on their masters dissertations under his supervision have also been deprived of his supervision overnight, which is intolerable.

This arbitrary procedure, which also deprives our colleague of the financial resources associated with his commitment, follows months of relentlessness against Joseph Daher by UNIL management. Prof. Daher was the subject of an administrative investigation for the loan of his “campus card”, a minor irregularity of which many colleagues are certainly “guilty” and which in no way justifies the brutal and totally disproportionate reaction of the UNIL management. As part of this investigation, the UNIL rectorate refused our colleague all of his requests to establish the truth about the situation and, more broadly, any means of defending himself, with an eagerness that no one knows it to have.

Such administrative relentlessness is a source of concern for all other employees of the institution because no one is safe. This is all the more worrying since the UNIL management has, at the same time, provided no protection to Prof. Daher against the smear campaign he has been subjected to for several months in the French- and German-speaking Swiss press in connection with his defence of fundamental rights and his commitment to supporting the demands of UNIL students mobilized for the Palestinian cause. In addition, UNIL’s management has repeatedly failed in its duty of functional protection towards one of its employees, refusing to respond to requests from journalists and the media. This breach of the obligation to protect the personality of one of its employees cannot be justified by the fact that he expressed himself on the basis of personal opinions, given the nature of his qualifications and his expertise in the fields in which he expressed himself.

Prof. Joseph Daher is an internationally recognized scholar of Middle Eastern political history. The author of several books on Middle Eastern societies, he holds two doctorates (one in political science from UNIL, the other in development sciences from London’s renowned School of Oriental and African Studies). He has taught at several European universities (Ghent and Paris-Dauphine) and for several years was visiting professor at the prestigious European University Institute in Florence. He is also involved in numerous study and consultancy missions for various international organizations (UNESCWA Beirut, UNICEF, etc.), NGOs (Impact) and research institutes (Asfari Institute at the American University of Beirut, Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung, Fondation pour la recherche stratégique, Paris; Clingendael Institute, Holland). His expertise is regularly sought by the international media. The UNIL management should have, at the very least, recalled Mr. Daher’s qualifications (his area of ​​expertise) and his status (Doctor and visiting Professor at the UNIL) when asked about him by the press.

The sidelining of the Prof. Daher is part of a wider political context of pressure and repression against scientists involved in the question of Palestine (as has been the case on other topics in the past). The chronology of events clearly indicates this, particularly in relation to the occupation of the Géopolis building last May by students demanding transparency on partnerships with universities in Israel and the suspension of these agreements in the name of the precautionary principle. The political reprisals and procedural arbitrariness to which Prof. Daher is subjected are unsustainable for our institution and our university community. We are in fact facing a serious violation of the fundamental principles of academic freedom and freedom of expression, principles which are under threat, as warned by the UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Education, Farida Shaheen, in her report “Principles for the implementation of the right to academic freedom”. These arbitrary measures also run counter to the five values enshrined in UNIL’s charter: critical knowledge, autonomy, universality, civic commitment and recognition of individuals. The sidelining of Prof. Daher and depriving him of the right to defend himself constitutes the completion of the denial of his fundamental rights. This way of acting should worry all employees of the UNIL.

We are outraged by these developments at our university. The measures taken by UNIL’s management join the long series of national and international attacks on the freedom to think, teach, research and learn that have affected and continue to affect teachers, researchers and students. They threaten the fundamental democratic rights of all, while discrediting an institution that exists only through the members who make it up, and that belongs no more to those who run it for a time than to the vital forces that make it up.

As a result, we demand the immediate reinstatement of our colleague Joseph Daher to his teaching and duties within the Faculty of Social and Political Sciences, so that the integrity, honor and reputation of our university may be preserved.

Photo credit: Institute of Palestine Studies