After Saddam Hussein's overthrow, university president Taher al-Bakaa gathered his staff, and promised them a university free from oppression and fear. But recently a dispute between a Sunni professor and a group of Shiite students turned into a demonstration that closed the campus for three days. Now, Dr. Bakaa says, religious factions are hijacking the university, and he fears for his life.

"If we let the parties interfere with the universities, it will be a bloody situation," says Al Bakaa. "Many people are in such fear they are giving up their post, including me. I am in danger."

A rise of religious fundamentalism is terrorizing the Iraqi academic community, and threatening to roll back the gains in academic freedom made by university presidents and their advisers from the United States since the end of the war.

University staff and students say religious groups are imposing themselves on campus, dividing students and threatening professors. The newly formed Council of University Presidents voted to postpone the first-ever national student elections which had been slated for March 15, for fear of violence.

"They don't want elections because the students are worried the religious fanatics will influence how the students vote," says John Agresto, US senior adviser to the Ministry of Higher Education. "The situation has become explosive."

Under Saddam's regime, religious groups had a slim presence on campuses, and students were all officially represented by one Baathist group - the National Union for Iraqi Students - which was overseen by Uday Hussein, son of the ousted leader.

But shortly after the war, students say Shiite and Sunni groups began appearing on campus under the guise of democratic-sounding student parties, such as "Students for Tomorrow." They roam campus like "morality police" telling girls to cover their heads, breaking up couples, pressuring professors to divide classes by gender, and using incendiary language that creates divisions, some students say.

Exacerbating the situation, say university presidents, is the appointment by the Iraqi governing council of a minister of higher education who is openly a member of a Sunni Islamist religious party and who has been appointing members of his own religious group into high-ranking university positions.

In one of his first acts in September, the minister, Zeyad Abdul-Razzaq Mohammed Aswad, fired several democratically elected university presidents and tried to replace them with members of his own religious party.

"We have a minister who is a religious fanatic," says a Baghdad University dean. "Every day I get a call from his office to remove a certain book that his campus spies have seen. Or to help a student who is a member of his religious group. It is the same people from the Baath Party, but now they are a religious group." [Editor's note: The original version of the story included the dean's name.]

The minister, a former professor and petroleum engineer, declined several requests for an interview.

Dr. Agresto and the US-led coalition say they are aware of the complaints about the minister, but that matters such as religion on campus are considered internal and are left to the Iraqi university administrators to handle.

Agresto says he reinstated all the presidents the minister fired - except Baghdad University's president - and he drew up an official "Code of Conduct," which emphasizes academic freedom and calls coercion or intimidation by a student or staff member "grounds for dismissal." All the presidents and the minister have agreed to sign it.

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