The University of Damascus is the largest and oldest university in Syria, located in the capital Damascus, with campuses in other Syrian cities. It was founded in 1923 as the Syrian University through the merger of the Medical School and the Institute of Law. It adopted its current name after the founding of the University of Aleppo in 1958.

Bashar al-Assad is a Syrian politician who is the current and 19th president of Syria since 17 July 2000. In addition, he is the commander-in-chief of the Syrian Armed Forces and the secretary-general of the Central Command of the Arab Socialist Ba'ath Party, which nominally espouses a neo-Ba'athist ideology. His father and predecessor was General Hafiz al-Assad, whose presidency in 1971–2000 marked the transfiguration of Syria from a republican state into a de facto dynastic dictatorship, tightly controlled by an Alawite-dominated elite composed of the armed forces and the Mukhabarat, who are loyal to the al-Assad family.