Tehran’s Campus Crackdown & Ahmadinejad to Speak on Campus at Columbia University - USA!! - (Updated 2)

September 17, 2007 — by Amir Taheri

AS millions of Iranians prepare for the new school year, the scene is being set for what could be a long hot autumn on university campuses across the nation. President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has promised to “cleanse” the Iranian educational system of what he calls “the corrupt influence of the infidel” and has mobilized a special militia to crush the expected student revolts.

The radical president refers to his “academic cleansing” plan as “The Second Great Islamic Cultural Revolution.” The late Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini closed the universities and launched the first “Great Islamic Cultural Revolution” in 1980. A committee created to “cleanse” academia purged more than 6,000 professors and lecturers, virtually destroying Iranian academia. Dozens of academics were executed as hundreds fled into exile. The committee also expelled thousands of students on charges of monarchist or leftist tendencies. It also censored or totally rewrote dozens of textbooks to conform to the Khomeinist ideology.

When the universities were reopened two years later, the committee tried to fill them with students and teachers sympathetic to Khomeinism. The trick was to allocate special places for members of The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and children of families believed to be loyal to the regime.

Further, it established a blacklist of banned authors and writings - an index that has grown every year since, reminding one of the worst days of the Inquisition in medieval Europe. The madness of censorship, supervised by the so-called Ministry of Islamic Orientation and Culture, reached a new peak last week with the banning of a new volume of memoirs of former President Hashemi Rafsanjani - who was a member of the original “cleansing” committee! – Read about Mullah Rafsanjani’s $400million in 2003 alone.

More than two decades of purges and “cultural cleansing” didn’t prevent Iranian universities from becoming bastions of opposition to the Khomeinist ideology. In the 1990s, Iran experienced the largest and longest student revolt in its history.  Former President Muhammad Khatami – Mullah Khatami’s trackrecord – crushed the revolt through the Revolutionary Guard (and Bassij militia) with mass arrests and the expulsion of thousands of students.  See 18 Tir Student Uprising.

Ahmadinejad launched his second “Islamic Cultural Revolution” last year by appointing a semiliterate mullah as chancellor of Tehran University - the first time that a cleric took charge of the nation’s oldest and largest center of higher education.

Ahmadinejad’s purge started last July with the replacement of 20-plus college deans. In almost every case, a bona fide academic was pushed out in favor of a Revolutionary Guard member.

In Tabriz, all seven members of the students union were picked up and taken to an unknown destination last month.

Read more - New York Post page 2

Also see previous short article discrimination against Bahai Students

AHMADINEJAD TO SPEAK ON CAMPUS AT COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, president of Iran, has accepted an invitation to speak at Columbia from School of International and Public Affairs interim dean John Coatsworth, according to a spokesman.

The event is scheduled to take place on Monday, September 24 — the same day that Ahmadinejad is scheduled to address the UN General Assembly–as part of the World Leaders Forum and will be sponsored by SIPA.

Read more at Columbia Spectator including the full text of Bollinger’s statement. – More details will be posted on columbiaspectator.com as they become available.

I find it incredulous that such an invitation is extended to a person who is clearly against the West, United States and humanity in general.  Are those who have extended this invitation or those who intend to listen to this megalomaniac not aware of his intentions and actions?!!  Can any Liberal or Conservative American, politician or otherwise, give a free speech at an Iranian University in Iran?  Have we not heard plenty about those Iranian-Americans recently arrested in Iran on alleged charges of espionage and “in the name of democracy”, including Kian Tajbakhsh, who is a Sociology Professor?!

Let them know how you feel:

Amanda Murphy
Alumni Relations Director
am2629@columbia.edu
954-240-4865

Julia Feldberg
Alumni Relations Associate
Speaker Series Contact
jef2121@columbia.edu

Kristen Kramer
Alumni Relations Associate
kek2121@columbia.edu

Emily Lampert
Alumni Relations Junior Associate
ebl2108@columbia.edu

DEAN OF THE COLLEGE
212-678-3050 TC* 3050

Updated Contact Numbers for Columbia University:

Columbia’s public affairs office. It has a statement regarding Iran’s President Amadjihad. You can also leave a message.

212 854 7328 - and - 212 854-5573

Also see Dr Gary Sick’s involvement in this invitation as an influential figure in Columbia University. “the Iranian lobby in US could not exist without generous assistance of some American interest groups and proxies such as Dr Gary Sick, the American Iranian Council in which Sick is a board member of, and his circle of cohorts.” - Read More HERE

President Lee C. Bollinger
phone: 212.854.9970, fax: 212.854.9973
Office hours: Weekdays, 8am-6pm

Gary Sick
International Affairs Building, 11th Floor
Senior Research Scholar
Phone: 212-854-1788
ggs2@columbia.edu

Best of all, BOYCOTT AHMADINEJAD’S SPEECH AT COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY!

See recent post: Bollinger to Ahmadinejad: You are a Petty and Cruel Dictator

See post September 27, 2007 - replies to Ahmadinejad’s speech at Columbia University — HERE