Fears of a Purge of Universities Grow in Iran - NYTimes.com

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By MICHAEL SLACKMAN

CAIRO — As Iran’s universities prepare to start classes this month, there is growing concern within the academic community that the government will purge political and social science departments of professors and curriculums deemed “un-Islamic,” according to academics and political analysts inside and outside Iran.

The fears have been stoked by speeches by the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and by President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, as well as by confessions of political prisoners, that suggest that the study of secular topics and ideas has made universities incubators for the political unrest unleashed after the disputed presidential election in June.

Ayatollah Khamenei said this week that the study of social sciences “promotes doubts and uncertainty.” He urged “ardent defenders of Islam” to review the human sciences that are taught in Iran’s universities and that he said “promote secularism,” according to Iranian news services.

“Many of the humanities and liberal arts are based on philosophies whose foundations are materialism and disbelief in godly and Islamic teachings,” Ayatollah Khamenei said at a gathering of university students and professors on Sunday, according to IRNA, the state news agency. Teaching those “sciences leads to the loss of belief in godly and Islamic knowledge.”

For years, the study of subjects like philosophy and sociology has been viewed suspiciously by Iranian conservatives. During the earliest days of the Islamic Revolution, the nation’s leaders closed universities and tried to sanitize curriculums to fit their Islamic revolutionary ideology. The efforts ultimately failed under the weight of more pragmatic forces eager to engage with Western economies, and a student population hungry for contemporary ideas and contact with the West.

But that failure never healed the ideological differences that have made it impossible for the nation and its hybrid elected and religious institutions to agree on one course, even one identity. In recent years, academics who attended conferences abroad, or took part in cultural exchange programs, were often vilified at home or viewed suspiciously. Some were arrested on charges of trying to organize a soft revolution.

The recent speeches by the country’s leaders suggest that they may no longer be willing to live with such ambiguity after months of unsuccessfully trying to extinguish the political and social crisis set off by the election.

“Iran is going through a crisis of legitimacy for the regime, and the crisis is based on the regime’s inability to respond to the demands for reform from the increasingly youthful population,” said Mark Fitzpatrick, a senior fellow at the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London. “The only response it can think of is to stop teaching of the social sciences.”

Rasool Nafisi, an academic based in Virginia who is an expert on Iran, agreed: “Khamenei’s statement does not bode well for the Iranian universities.”

“He seems to try to pick up where the Islamic republic left off over two decades ago when the late Ayatollah Khomeini expressed similar aversion to ‘Westoxicated learning’ in the universities, and ordered dropping all but natural sciences from the university curricula,” Mr. Nafisi said, referring to Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.

The current supreme leader, Ayatollah Khamenei, called for “the promotion of a spiritual environment in universities” and requested that the government of Mr. Ahmadinejad make this a “serious concern,” according to Iranian news services that reported on the comments the ayatollah made Sunday.

During Mr. Ahmadinejad’s first term in office, his administration forced out many professors and replaced them.

“I think that they don’t like maybe new ideas to get to Iran,” said an Iranian academic now living outside the country. “They don’t like social and cultural figures in the Iranian society to become very popular. That is the aspect which makes problems for them.”

The state’s renewed focus on education took center stage last week when the confession of a prominent reformer, Saeed Hajjarian, who had been the theoretician behind the reform movement, was broadcast on national television.

The confession, dismissed by reform leaders as a reflection of the views of Mr. Hajjarian’s jailers, provided a lengthy criticism of human sciences, especially sociology and political science. The confession also addressed Mr. Hajjarian’s application of political theories to his own work, saying, “For these unworthy interpretations which became the cause of many immoral acts, I ask forgiveness of the Iranian people.”

In another development, Iran’s nuclear negotiator, Saeed Jalili, said that the government had prepared an updated nuclear proposal to give to the West, Iranian news services reported.

Mona el-Naggar contributed reporting.