Arash Aramesh

Since coming into office in the summer of 2005, the government of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has implemented a number of measures restricting the activities of critical student organizations and professors.

Ahmadinejad government’s tense relationship with members of academia in Iran has gotten worse in recent years. Many professors have been either fired or forced into early retirement. A significant number of student activists have been suspended, expelled, or even jailed for taking part in anti-government activities.

In recent years, pro-government organizations on Iran’s campuses, such as the Basij, have received additional funding and support from the government. Ahmadinejad’s critics accuse him and his supporters of seeking a cultural revolution in Iran, through which university campuses would be cleansed of undesirable elements and anti-government activities.

Kamran Daneshjoo, Iran’s Minister of Science, Research, and Technology said on March 4: “Professors who are unable to adapt to the will of the people must move aside.” According to Fars News, a news agency with close ties to the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, Daneshjoo told a group of Basij students from Iran’s northern provinces that the country needed professors who truly loved the students and did not view them as “foot soldiers.”

Daneshjoo warned Iran’s academics that the country did not need their expertise if it were not accompanied with religious piety and added, “We will bring in so many [pious] experts to universities so those people in the minority [secular academics] who think they are much better than the rest realize that they are no different.”

Daneshjoo, who is in charge of Iran’s higher centers of learning, asserted, “Presidents of universities do not have the right to recruit anyone unless they are committed to the constitution. If they do otherwise, we will deal with them through legal means.”

Daneshjoo added, “A person who reaches the highest levels of accomplishment is [like someone] who is wearing a shield [and that shield] is his acceptance of Velayat Faqih.”

On August 31, Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei expressed concern about the contents of the curriculum taught to humanities students and said, “Many of these humanities courses are based on materialism and lack the belief in God and teaching such course will lead into a lack of belief in Islam and Islamic teachings.” He asked the Ministry of Science, Research, and Technology; the Supreme Council on Cultural Revolution; and the parliament to address this issue.

The relationship between the Iranian government and students has deteriorated in recent years. Many student activists have been arrested and their student organizations, some of which had years of presence on Iran’s campuses, were declared illegal by the government.

In the months leading up to the June 12 election, university students played a major role in supporting Mir Hossein Moussavi and Mehdi Karroubi. After the election, and during unrest in Iran’s major cities, Iranian security forces targeted student dormitories and campuses. In recent weeks, a few students were arrested inside classrooms. This led a number of Iranian academics to write letters to Ayatollah Khamenei and the government protesting the actions of the security forces.

Many observers believe that the government’s lack of trust for Iran’s academy will result in a major overhaul of the country’s higher education system through terminations, suspensions, and a much more selective admission process based on students’ ideology and their perceived loyalty to supreme clerical rule.