MANOUBA, Tunisia — The serene university in this Tunis suburb hardly looked like a tinderbox of religious strife on a recent sunny morning. Young women in snug T-shirts lounged next to young men on benches. Veiled women strolled with male classmates.

But inside his second-floor office, Dean Habib Kazdaghli only half-joked about the University of Manouba evolving into “Manoubistan.” He paged through his binder of evidence — news clippings chronicling a nearly year-long campus battle that he says pits “modernist” academics like himself against fundamentalists who want to take Tunisia back centuries.