Baghdad College - Baathist Nationalization

Baathist Nationalization

The Jesuits had deliberately avoided involvement in politics, but the threat of their expulsion from Iraq had always lingered. Despite wide acceptance in the Baghdad community, each government crisis offered an opportunity for successive governments to expel the Jesuits. Signals of serious trouble arose in 1967 when the American Embassy in Iraq closed as a result of the Six-Day War with Israel. The American Jesuits remained at the school despite the exodus of most Americans from Iraq.

In 1968, the Baathist coup drastically changed the country's political landscape. Private schools, Muslim and Christian alike, were nationalized, as had been done a decade earlier in Syria. Rejecting the pleas of Muslim professors at Baghdad University, the Baathist government seized Al-Hikma University and ordered the Al-Hikma Jesuits out of Iraq in November 1968, the first government of Iraq to do so Ignoring the warnings of the Baathists, hundreds of students gathered at the airport to bid farewell to the Jesuit Fathers, affectionately referred to by the Iraqis as fadheria. The government subsequently took control of Baghdad College on August 24, 1969 and gave the remaining 33 Jesuits three days to leave Iraq. In total, 145 Jesuits worked at Baghdad College. Five are buried next to the school's chapel, land that still belongs to the Society of Jesus. Baghdad College has remained a public institution since the Jesuit expulsion, and has retained its elite status.