The Islamic Republic’s War on Its Universities Is Accelerating

CEP Senior Advisor Dr. Saeid Golkar writes: When Islamic Azad University summoned veteran professor Mehdi Zakarian for “supporting Western-oriented thinking,” it reflected the Islamic Republic’s ongoing war against intellectual freedom. In Iran, universities are not sanctuaries of inquiry but battlegrounds where dissent is equated with subversion.

Since the Islamic Republic began in 1979, the university has been a battleground between the regime, which seeks to control and use it for its own ideological purposes, and academics who fight for scholarly independence and autonomy. That is why, under the banner of “cultural revolution,” the regime in 1980 shuttered universities for three years to purge dissenting students and professors and to Islamize higher education.