There has been a project of what Ali Larijani has called “purification” within the three branches of the government spearheaded by Iran’s “super-revolutionary” forces such as the Paydari Front. As part of this campaign, they are continuing to push for a more “homogenized” or unified government and Nezam since the Majles election of 2020 and the presidential contest of 2021 (Daily Summaries of 21 August 2023: “Upcoming Elections: Battlefield for Ideological Warfare” and 25 August 2023: “Division within Two Ideological Camps Hardening”). “Exposition jihad,” aimed at training, educating, and producing a new generation of revolutionaries, seems to have been ineffective in light of last year’s Woman, Life, Freedom uprising. So now the attempt at purification is extending beyond the political realm into the social-educational arena.
On 25 August Khabar Online published an article entitled, “Expulsion, Suspension, and Forced Retirement of Professors; What Is Going on at Universities?” Mohammad Fazeli, a sociologist who himself was forced out of his academic position, reacted thus to the expulsion of a colleague, Mehdi Kho’i, from Allameh Tabataba’i University: “Trying to create a type of faculty that is conservative, politically aligned with you, and subdued will not produce the desired student body that you seek.” One day earlier E’temad Online published the names of 157 professors who have been expelled from Iran’s universities during the Ahmadinejad, Rouhani, and Ra’isi administrations. During Ahmadinejad’s two terms, 85 professors were fired; under Rouhani’s last four years, there were 14 such expulsions between 2017 and 2021. Ebrahim Ra’isi, however, promises to outdo both, in that in slightly over two years, 58 professors have been fired. With its naming of all the expelled professors, E’temad Online points out that the list would have been in the thousands if it had included forced retirees and suspended professors during the last two decades. The Nezam is systematically targeting outspoken critics at the universities and purging them under the guise of “academic or scientific inabilities.” E’temad’s long article also claims that after the Woman, Life, Freedom uprising subsided, the purge of university professors in the winter of last year, took other forms: forced retirement, non-renewal of contracts, not assigning classes to them, interruption of their tenure track, and withholding salary. Indeed, there has been a new wave of expulsion during the last week. Professor Ali Sharifi-Zarchi of Sharif University, who supported student protestors during last year’s uprising, was fired on 25 August. A day earlier, Daryush Rahmanian of the University of Tehran was also suspended. As noted, there has been a wave of arrests of the parents and family members of those who lost their lives during the protest last year as well as a new wave of arrests of religious minorities like the Baha’is during the past several weeks (Daily Summary of 21 August 2023: “Protest Anniversary Fears Focused on Uncommitted Iranians”).
The message to civil society and especially to critics of the Nezam seems to be that the establishment remains in control and will not tolerate a repeat of last year’s protests. Aiming to purge the education system of Western influence, the Islamic Republic had its “cultural revolution” between 1980 and 1983. Now, two generations and 44 years later, it seems to be in need of another push to tighten its grip on Iran’s civil society, which is becoming increasingly impatient. The Nezam seems to have concluded that political homogenization or purification of the political system and security forces are not enough; the educators and the universities must also be “purified.” If this assessment is correct, it seems there is an effort to repeat the contraction that took place with the 2021 elections and the ascendancy of Ra’isi and his “super-revolutionary” allies within Iran’s civil society in general and universities in particular.
