Badran announces return to classes and administration at LU

BEIRUT — The president of the Lebanese University (LU), Bassam Badran, announced Monday that classes and administrative activities will resume as normal starting Tuesday, March 17 in all faculties and branches.

However, he specified that he would "monitor developments and issue other decisions as needed, in light of the evolution of the state of war in the country."

The university suspended all classes and administrative activities across its faculties and institutes last Thursday following an Israeli drone strike on its Hadath campus (Beirut southern suburbs.)

The attack killed Hussein Bazzi, director of the Faculty of Sciences, and Professor Mortada Srour while they were in the campus courtyard. The strike sparked widespread outrage in Lebanon and abroad due to the targeting of academics. Israel later justified the operation, claiming Srour was “a member of Hezbollah’s aerial unit.”

More about the attack

What we know about the two professors killed in the Lebanese University Hadath strike

Badran referenced an earlier statement published on March 9, in which he asked "employees and academics who have difficulty reaching their usual workplace to report to the nearest LU center, or to the main university headquarters."

Additionally, the LU administration is organizing on Tuesday, in cooperation with the League of Full-Time Professors, the presidency of the council of delegates, and the League of University Employees, "a sit-in to denounce this unacceptable Israeli attack against the Rafik Hariri campus in Hadath, which claimed the lives of Professors Hussein Bazzi and Mortada Srour while they were on academic duty," according to a statement distributed by LU. The sit-in will be held Tuesday at 11 a.m. in front of LU's main headquarters, Museum sector, in Beirut.