The Student Movement’s struggle

Walking the streets of downtown Tehran during election season, one
sees a striking picture. Rushing under and past the prominent murals
and election posters featuring ayatollahs and other clerics with long gray
beards and turbans is a teeming young populace that bears little resemblance,
and feels little connection, to these figures. The revolutionary
fervor that gripped Iran after the toppling of Shah Mohammad Reza
Pahlavi’s monarchical dictatorship almost three decades ago has subsided,
and the spirit of the Islamic Revolution, particularly among Iran’s
youth, has given way to feelings of restlessness, disenchantment, and
even defiance. But will the regime’s lack of legitimacy and young Iranians’
disaffection be enough to bring about democratic change? Does the
disaffection have a political vehicle or even much political content?
Theoretically, political parties could represent a generation of frustrated
and alienated youth, but Iran has almost no real, established parties.
Alliances form just before elections only to dissolve soon after,
and those with enough staying power to be even loosely called parties
tend to be hidebound and lack meaningful ties to civil society. Tying
these feelings of youthful rebellion to the cause of political change will
require the rise of a stronger, more organized, and more representative
democracy movement that encompasses all elements of Iranian civil society.
One way such a movement might come into being is through the
Iranian student movement, which historically has been at the forefront
of opposition politics and has a natural connection to young people.
After the 1979 Islamic Revolution, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini
urged Iranians to bear more children, his “soldiers for Islam,” in order
to strengthen the fledgling Islamic Republic. Pronatalism continued
through the Iran-Iraq War of 1980 to 1988, when Iran lost more than half
a million of its young men. With help from such policies, Iran’s population
has nearly doubled since 1979, with official figures now placing it
at just over 70 million.
Through a comprehensive family-planning program started in the late
۱۹۸۰s, Iran has managed to tame its population surge and achieve sustainable
birth rates, but the high population-growth rates of recent decades
have left the country with a population that “skews young.” Iranians under
۳۰ now number 48.6 million, or 70 percent of the total population,
and the median age is approximately 26 years.1 As these “children of the
Revolution” (who are too young personally to remember the Revolution)
have begun to come of age and to enter the ever-crowded workforce, the
regime is finding itself increasingly hard-pressed to cope with a demographic
problem that its own former policies helped to feed.
This demographic shift toward youth, coupled with economic pressures
and a growing desire for modernity, has given rise to a cohort of
Iranians under the age of thirty who continually test the limits of the totalitarian
state under which they live. Although not avowedly political,
young people are increasingly frustrated by the state’s efforts to control
their lives, and their feelings of discontent and resentment toward the
regime suggest the limits of authoritarian legitimacy and hence may be
read as boding well for the future of democracy in Iran.
Iran’s Youth
Before discussing the student movement, it is important to examine and
identify the emerging youth population. Roughly speaking, each of the
past four decades has seen the rise of a somewhat distinct generation tied
to a particular set of formative experiences and events. First, there was the
revolutionary generation, born in the 1960s, who lived through the turmoil
of the Pahlavi monarchy’s collapse and the rise of Khomeini and Shi’ite
clerical rule. Second, there is the wartime generation, brought up during
the bloody 1980s and the difficult period of reconstruction that followed.
Third, there is the reformist generation that came of age amid hopes for
“reform from within” roused by the two-term presidency of the putatively
liberal cleric Mohammad Khatami (r. 1997–۲۰۰۵). Many of Khatami’s
youthful voters (the age of suffrage in Iran was only 15 until it was raised
to 18 in January 2007) have yet to reach their thirtieth year.
There is also a fourth, emerging generation—perhaps it should be
called the postreformist generation, or even the nuclear generation—that
makes up the rest of Iran’s massive younger population. Unlike earlier
generations, today’s youth have no memories of the shah, and little or
no direct recollection of the 1979 Islamic Revolution. Indeed, almost
۴۸ million Iranians alive today—more than two-thirds of the population—
had not been born at the time of the Revolution. For many, the
war against Saddam Hussein’s Iraq is something that they hear about
from older relatives or read about in books—only a relative few have
any personal memory of the costly conflict that consumed most of the
۱۹۸۰s and cost hundreds of thousands of Iranians their lives. The under-
۳۰ generation knows current Supreme Leader Grand Ayatollah Ali
Khamenei’s autocracy better than his predecessor Khomeini’s revolutionary
zeal, and is more acquainted with the nuclear crisis of today than
the U.S.-hostages crisis of decades ago.
While one must be careful not to treat an enormous body such as Iran’s
under-30 population as a monolith—especially given the lack of independent
survey data—all accounts agree that the values of the young stand
in stark contrast to those of their elders. Generally speaking, the generation
that made the Revolution was extremely ideological and anti-Western
(particularly anti-American); spoke of self-sacrifice for the sake of the Islamic
Republic’s revolutionary project and its spread throughout the Muslim
world; and, after the shah’s forced Westernization, was concerned
more with public than with private life. With some exceptions, young
people today are essentially nonideological; favor normal relations with
the international community, particularly with the West and the United
States; seek pluralism in both politics and culture; care more about private
than public matters; and are more concerned with fitting into a rapidly
changing world than with transforming it. More specifically, the differences
between today’s youth and those who grew up in the heyday of the
Revolution can be seen in two main areas: culture and religion.
Culturally, Iranian youth are increasingly shunning traditional norms
and constantly testing the country’s restrictive laws. Western music can
be heard blaring from car stereos or wafting from private house parties,
and Western-style musical groups—including Persian-language
rappers—enjoy sizeable followings. Far fewer marital engagements are
arranged by families, as young people are finding ways to date by escaping
to coffee houses and parks, and are eventually marrying at a much
older age than past generations. Presently, the average age of marriage
for women is 27.9 years, compared to 23 years a decade ago.2 Clothing
fashions grow ever more audacious. In big cities such as Tehran (though
not only there), most young women prefer a bright and often form-fitting
roopoosh (overcoat) to a loose, dark-colored chador. They wear
patterned headscarves pushed back to expose as much hair as possible,
and body-hugging jeans with the legs daringly rolled up. The amount
of makeup and plastic surgery now seen on the streets of Tehran would
shock even a Hollywood denizen. Women routinely have their lips or
eyebrows tattooed, and proudly sport bandages from rhinoplasty, so
much so that some wags now call Iran “Nose-job Nation.”
Although laws regarding dress are more restrictive for women than
for men, young men are also flouting Islamic appearance codes. Defying
older norms, they increasingly wear their hair long and in complex,
intricately gelled styles that look like something from a 1950s “greaser”
movie. Indeed, the regime’s annual springtime crackdown on “un-Islamic”
dress has come to target men as well as women. Police may shout
Dastaa baalaa! (“Hands up!”) at a young man; if his stomach shows
when he reaches for the sky he may be interrogated or fined for wearing
his shirt too short. A university in the northwestern city of Shiraz went
as far as to prohibit men from wearing shorts and short-sleeved shirts,
an act that sparked student protests until the ban was overturned.
New technologies ease cultural change. An estimated 73 percent of
youth have access to satellite-television dishes3 that bring them news
from sources other than state-sanctioned outlets, as well as Western
movies deemed unfit for Iranian movie theaters. Personal wireless devices
allow hard-to-monitor electronic communications, and creative
ways around Internet filters give access to foreign media and forbidden
websites. Iran has become one of the most computer-savvy nations
in the broader Middle East, and its people boast the region’s highest
proportion of Internet users (38.6 percent). Teenagers and college students
pack Internet cafes to communicate with their friends via e-mail
or instant messaging, and to read and write endless Web logs (“blogs”)
about all aspects of their lives. According to estimates, Iran in 2006 was
the home base for somewhere between seventy and a hundred thousand
blogs; only eight other countries had more. Farsi has become the tenth
most prevalent language in the blogosphere, and the popular Blogfa domain
name reports nearly two million visitors per day.4
Religion, the hallmark of the Islamic Revolution, is another line of
demarcation between those under thirty and their elders. By most accounts,
present-day Iranian youth treat religion differently than do their
elders. Fewer than 3 percent attend Friday prayers,5 and those who are
religious prefer to treat their beliefs as private. Many young people consider
themselves casual or nonpracticing Muslims, and see no contradiction
between dating, or even engaging in premarital sex, and still
believing in God.
In many ways, the youth have forged a way to reconcile modernity
and their changing cultural preferences with the traditionalist interpretation
of Shi’ite Islam espoused by the state. For example, the religious
festival of Ashura, a somber day of mourning for the martyred Imam
Hussein (d. 680 C.E.), has now become an occasion for “Hussein parties”
where young people dress up (though still in dark colors) and seek
to mingle with members of the opposite sex. Some even bring dates to
what has traditionally been a highly solemn observance.
On their own, these cultural and religious changes among Iran’s
youth would be enough to worry the regime. What makes them even
threaten the very foundations of the Islamic Republic. Younger Iranians
are highly educated, with postsecondary enrollment now at about two
million. Often, however, people with bachelor’s and even graduate or
professional degrees can find no job commensurate with their skills.
Many are jobless altogether. Even physicians are unemployed—currently
about ten thousand of them.
In a 2006 survey by the state-run National Youth Organization, young
people cited joblessness as one of the main problems they face in their
lives. In 2005, there were approximately ten million young people of
working age (that is, people between the ages of 15 and 29), and according
to official numbers, a 34 percent unemployment rate among this
group.6 This is higher than both the Ministry of Labor and Social Affairs
official overall unemployment rate of 12.5 percent and unofficial
estimates that run close to 25 percent.7 Despite the decrease in the population-
growth rate to its current manageable level of 1.61 percent per
year,8 there simply are not enough jobs being created for the burgeoning
youth population. Iran needs a million new jobs each year to employ
the new entrants into its labor force, but the economy is managing to
create only 300,000 annually. President Ahmedinejad’s reckless fiscal
policies, coupled with increasing international isolation and economic
sanctions, have significantly worsened this problem.
Drug addiction, prostitution, and human trafficking are additional ills
that disproportionately harm young people. The most recent official figures
peg the number of addicts at 2.5 million and recreational users at 1.5
million. Previous estimates by the Iranian National Center for Addiction
Studies put the total number of addicts at 7 million. Among the youth, official
studies claim the share of addicts to be 2 percent among high-school
students, 3 percent among university students, 17 percent among those aged
۲۰ to 24, and 23 percent for those between 25 and 29. That these numbers
increase as one gets closer to the prime age brackets for entering and establishing
oneself in the labor force may be another token of economic despair
and the sense that the Islamic Republic is badly failing its citizens.
Exact numbers for prostitution are difficult to come by, as the subject
is taboo in the Islamic Republic, but it is estimated that Iran has 300,000
prostitutes, most of whom are between the ages of 14 and 25. Human
sex trafficking has also become all too common. During the past year, an
estimated 100,000 young women were trafficked to neighboring states,
most commonly Dubai, Turkey, and Pakistan.9
Disaffection and Democracy
What, then, does all this have to do with democracy? Just because
someone listens to Western music, avoids mosque attendance, and com
plains about bleak job prospects does not automatically make that person
a democrat. Indeed, Iran’s postreformist generation has been charged with
being more apathetic and selfish than its predecessors, concerned only
with personal comfort and not with the overall well-being of society. Yet
in a country such as Iran, what in other countries might pass for typical
acts of aimless youthful rebellion unavoidably take on a political cast. A
girl wearing a loose-fitting headscarf or a boy listening to underground
Persian rap may not be consciously trying to make a political statement.
But in a totalitarian country where the regime seeks to control every aspect
of its citizens’ lives and interprets any hint of Western influence as
pernicious, these acts become a de facto form of political opposition.
There is no question that the regime sees things this way. In the first
two months after the announced crackdown on “un-Islamic” dress began
in March 2007, more than 67,000 girls were given warnings, and almost
۱۵,۰۰۰ were interrogated and jailed for short stretches.10 Satellite dishes
have been confiscated in huge numbers, and the state has cut Internet
bandwidth in order to thwart censorship-avoiding technologies such as
instant messengers or the Skype web-based phone service. There has
even been a clampdown on underground music that resulted in the arrest
of six popular Iranian rappers.
The fear that de facto acts of resistance such as ignoring the dress
code inspires in the regime appears to be compounded by its awareness
that many young Iranians remember the relatively reformist era of
Khatami, under whom they became used to a measure of cultural and
political openness. The hard-won freedoms gained under Khatami’s administration
threaten Ahmedinejad’s conservative government, which is
taking great pains to curb them. Yet youth is not willing easily to give
up these liberties, which it sees as rights rather than privileges. There is
certainly a degree of uninterest in formal politics among Iran’s youth,
perhaps in no small part because those groups which pass for political
parties have so little connection with civil society generally and youth
especially. The average age of those who belong to any of the parties
(such as they are) appears to be about 50. Members of parliament are
only slightly younger, averaging apparently about 45.
Khatami benefited from the support of hordes of younger voters, but
none of Iran’s weak, elitist, tradition-bound, and involuted parties or
quasi-parties has done much since to reach out to youth. And yet for all
the talk of young Iranians’ political apathy, Khatami’s presidency did
help to mobilize a huge portion of disaffected youth and introduce them
to the political process. Many veterans of Khatami-era reformist campaigns
are still not even thirty years old.
The reformist movement failed not because of a lack of rank-and-file
enthusiasm, but because it ran into constitutional obstacles that it could
not overcome. The Islamic Republic’s constitution renders institutions
based on direct elections—including the presidency and parliament—
extremely weak and subordinate to the Supreme Leader. Legislation that
clears parliament must also pass muster with the 12-member Guardian
Council, a body whose veto can only be overridden by the Expediency
Council, most of whose members are the Supreme Leader’s appointees.
The Iranian presidency wields tightly limited powers that include no
veto on legislation and no power to appoint the heads of the army and
the police. The president must have approval from parliament (and also,
in practice, from the Supreme Leader) in order to name cabinet ministers,
and controls neither foreign policy nor education policy.11 Through
direct appointments or vetting, the Supreme Leader—whose power as
“supreme Islamic legal expert” is the keystone of the regime—controls
۷۵ percent of political institutions, and the Guardian Council has the
power to disqualify reformist candidates for popularly elected offices.
The antidemocratic forces within Iran will only let reformism go so far,
as one can see from the Guardian Council’s decision to bar 51 percent
of reformist candidates—including eighty incumbents—from running in
the 2004 parliamentary elections.
Simply put, democracy is not possible within Iran’s existing constitutional
framework, and given this, Khatami’s reform movement could
only go so far. The reform movement’s failure to achieve full democracy
may have left many disillusioned and disgruntled, yet the reformists
played an important role in establishing and strengthening a movement
that was not simply for Khatami himself, but rather for democracy in
general. This movement holds great potential for democracy’s future in
Iran, particularly if it can draw upon the young population’s desire for
more openness and freedoms. Most importantly, it can provide a base of
support that can help push through institutional changes which can help
bring democracy to Iran. As Khatami’s presidency shows, the regime
will employ any and all measures to resist reforms that threaten its survival.
Without a foundational movement to give democratic forces the
courage and political will to push back, democracy can never take hold.
Students and Their Associations
The democracy movement that Iran needs can, and must, draw its
support from all sectors of civil society, including women’s groups, labor
unions, intellectuals, and the student movement. This last has the
potential to become a potent force within the democracy movement,
as it enjoys a natural connection to Iran’s huge youth population and
can draw on an ever-growing student population for support. Just as
Iran’s population has soared since the Islamic Revolution, so has the
number of students. In the last year of the shah’s reign, there were about
۱۶۰,۰۰۰ students in public universities; by the 2005–۲۰۰۶ school year,
this number had jumped nearly sevenfold to more than a million and
even then represented only about half the total number of Iranians en
rolled in postsecondary education. Aside from the sheer increase in the
number of students in this time, there has also been a marked increase
in the number of women in universities. Between these same years, the
female share of the college-student population more than doubled, rising
from 31 to 64 percent.12
The past decade has also seen an increase in the number of students
in private universities. These are known as azad or “free” universities
because they operate outside the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Higher
Education (although they are still controlled by conservative clerics).
Founded by three clerics without any higher education—among them
former president and current Expediency Council and Assembly of Experts
chairman Hashemi Rafsanjani—these universities have grown in
popularity and now have branches in all Iranian provinces, including in
small towns. Students do not have to take the difficult national entrance
examination to gain admission, and they enjoy somewhat more freedom
in their daily affairs than do their counterparts at traditional public universities.
In less than a decade—between the school years 1997–۹۸ and
۲۰۰۴–۲۰۰۵—the number of students in azad universities rose from just
over 600,000 to approximately 860,000. Again, the female share of the
student body in these universities has also increased, jumping from 41
percent to 50 percent during these same years.
As noted above, there are about two-million postsecondary students all
told, and more than half (53 percent) are women. This two-million amounts
to about 3 percent of Iran’s total population, or roughly 13 percent of the
population between the ages of 18 and 30.13 Even as universities churn
out graduates who cannot find jobs, it is estimated that the overall student
population will continue to grow by around 5 percent a year.
Whereas students once had to travel to Tehran or its environs to get
a proper higher education, burgeoning college enrollments are now evident
in many other parts of Iran as well. While Tehran still draws the
biggest share (21 percent), provinces such as Isfahan, Khorasan, East
Azerbaijan, Khuzestan, and Mazandaran are becoming centers of education.
This is encouraging, for it means that the student movement’s potential
support base is not only growing numerically but is also spreading
geographically to areas well beyond the capital.
With university ranks swelling, students are becoming more deeply
involved in issues both on and off campus. Four types of student groups
tend—whether directly or indirectly—to test the boundaries drawn by the
regime. The first are arts associations, which show movies, plan concerts
and performances, and generally seek to entertain the student body at
large. These groups operate under the supervision of the each campus’s
Office of Cultural Programs. Since Ahmedinejad entered office, censorship
and other restrictions on campus cultural activities have tightened.
Student publications, the second group, have played a particularly
active role on Iran’s campuses. The Khatami era saw such publications
multiply; eventually there were more than five-thousand and they discussed
subjects ranging from science and literature to politics. Threatened
by an independent press and the free flow of ideas, Ahmedinejad’s
government has tried to suppress these publications by slashing their
budgets and banning some of them altogether.
The third group are shoray-i senfi, or student trade unions, which
were formed during Khatami’s presidency and are elected by the student
body as a whole. Similar to the student councils often found at universities
in the West, these groups represent student interests and deal with
such matters as academic curricula, recreational activities, and the state
of dormitories and cafeterias. While these domains may seem mundane,
the government’s micromanagement of universities often makes questions
of course offerings, required readings, and faculty personnel decisions
into de facto political controversies. Recent politically motivated
faculty purges and student suspensions have energized students and
sparked debate between their unions and university administrators.
To the fourth and final category of student associations belong the
political groups, including the prodemocratic student movement. This
movement is not simply part of a “youth culture” or subculture, but is
in fact currently the main organizational pillar of Iranian civil society.
Activists from this movement focus not merely on campus issues such
as the independence of universities from government control, but on
such larger matters as freedom, democracy, and human rights in the
country at large. The movement dates back to the 1930s, when young
Iranians studying in Berlin began to criticize the dictatorship of Reza
Shah Pahlavi (r. 1925–۴۱), the army officer who had seized the throne
after staging a military coup against the tottering Qajar dynasty in 1921.
During Reza Shah’s time student political groups were mainly liberal in
ideology, but after Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadeq (r. 1951–۵۳)
was overthrown in a 1953 coup led by Mohammad Reza Shah (Reza
Shah’s son, who would be toppled in 1979), they became more leftist
and communist-leaning. Student groups began to become involved in
strikes and protests against the Pahlavi regime, and were strongly represented
and active within the main militant protest movements of the
time—the Mojahedin-e Khalq (Holy Warriors for the People) and the
Fedayan-e Khalq (Martyrs for the People).
Stages of Student Activism
The student movement’s modern, postrevolutionary history can
be divided into three major stages. First, from 1979 until the Cultural
Revolution of 1981, the movement was strongly influenced by the
prevailing politics and ideology of the Islamic Revolution. The student
movement comprised communist-leaning and religious factions, both
of which were anti-American, anticapitalist, and generally left-leaning.
The student movement at that time is perhaps best remembered for its 4
November 1979 takeover of the U.S. embassy in Tehran and the 444-day
hostage crisis that ensued.
During the second stage, from the Cultural Revolution until Khomeini’s
death in 1989, student groups deemed not sufficiently supportive of
the government were purged of their members or banned altogether. The
government also created Islamic Student Associations (ISAs) to serve as
officialdom’s “eyes and ears” inside the universities.
Khomeini’s June 1989 death and Khamenei’s promotion to Supreme
Leader—which signaled a power shift from left to right within
the regime—brought about a third and still-current stage for the student
movement. Since 1990, groups set up by the government, including the
ISAs as well as the Daftar Takhim-e Vahdat (Office for Consolidating
Unity or OCU) have taken up the call for freedom, democracy, and human
rights. Creations but no longer organs of the regime, these groups
have become members of the democratic opposition and engines of the
reform movement.
Like Iranian youth, the student movement is not homogenous. Political
groups can be divided into four main categories: government-run,
socialist-communist, Islamic-oriented, and democratic. Exact membership
numbers for these groups are unavailable. Our best estimate is that
today around half of those who are active in student groups belong to
organizations from the fourth (democratic) category, with the remaining
students divided more or less evenly among the other three types.
The proregime groups are supportive of and funded by the government,
and their main goal is to reproduce the regime’s ideology inside
the universities. The two biggest such organizations are the student
wings, respectively, of the Basij militia and the Hezbullah (Party of
God). Both hew to the regime’s line of hostility to modernity and the
West, and support the current form of government and its key institution,
the “supremacy of the Islamic legal expert.” They are hierarchical
and paternalistic, and favor tighter government control over university
life. Often their members are bussed to street rallies or auditoriums in
order to create the impression of massive student support for the government.
Additionally, they harass—sometimes violently—students who
criticize the regime. Aside from the “true believers” and beneficiaries
of the regime, students who gravitate to proregime groups come mostly
from the poorer classes and from rural areas, lured by the prospect of
safe government jobs after graduation.
Socialist-communist groups too form a minority within the student
movement, though in recent years their popularity has increased modestly.
They tend to be well-organized and enjoy a strong media presence,
particularly online. In their ranks are found mainly poor and middle-class
students from Tehran. Unofficial and underground organizations such as
the student branch of the exiled Hezbe Communiste Kargeri (Commu
nist Workers’ Group) tend to be intensely revolutionary in outlook—at
times even condoning violence—and see themselves as fighting the establishment
for the sake of the oppressed masses. Leftist groups are very
liberal on cultural issues, and secular to the point of being antireligious.
While they oppose the current regime, they are also against the normalization
of U.S.-Iranian relations and denounce globalization even
more vociferously than do the ruling clerics. While the more socialist
and modern of the socialist-communist groups support democracy, the
avowedly communist groups favor a Marxist state.
Islamic-oriented groups form a third minority bloc within the student
movement. Such groups include the National Religious Party (Melli Mazhabi)
and the Participation Front (Jebheye Mosharaket). Their base lies
among religiously observant students who come mostly from poor or
middle-income rural areas. Most of their members support the cause of
Khatami-style reformism. The main feature of this Islamic-student bloc is
a belief in democracy within the context of Islamic jurisprudence. That is,
its members want democracy and respect for human rights, but within the
confines of the existing constitution. They are somewhat liberal on cultural
issues, and try to combine modernity with tradition. Unlike the previous
two groups, they favor normalizing relations with the United States, and
also look upon globalization as a positive force that can help Iran.
Lastly, there are the prodemocratic groups. Finding most of their
base on the campuses of greater Tehran, these groups reflect not only
liberal-democratic and secular but also Islamic-modernist and socialdemocratic
schools of thought. Members come from a range of socioeconomic
backgrounds, and agree in favoring democratic development,
respect for human rights, ideological pluralism, and a principled and
permanent separation between religious and political authority. Like the
Islamist groups, they want friendly relations with the United States and
wish to take advantage of globalization, but differ by calling for radical
reform and constitutional change through peaceful means. For democratic
groups, an independent, nongovernmental student movement is
an integral part of civil society, and they seek to engage all elements of
civil society, not just students and young people.
There are numerous democratic political groups—such as the Independent
Student Union (Ettehadi-e Mostaghel-e Daneshjui), the Student
Democratic Front (Jebhe-e Demokratik-e Daneshjui), and the National
Student Union (Ettehadi-e Melli-e Daneshjuyan)—but all are unofficial
and operate outside the confines of universities—and so enjoy only limited
support.
The Office for Consolidating Unity
The largest and most powerful democratic political group is formed
by the OCU and its corresponding ISAs. These groups are at the fore
front of the student movement, not only because they are active on seventy
campuses across Iran, but because their inclusive and democratic
institutional structures make them better able to represent students. Each
university has an ISA whose members are elected by all students—candidates
must be ISA members but nonmembers are eligible to vote—and
these representatives in turn elect students to serve on the ten-member
national committee of the OCU for a one-year term. Exact numbers for
ISA membership are difficult to find across all universities, but we estimate
that approximately fifty-thousand students took part in the most
recent elections.
The ISAs and the OCU have been at the forefront of many demonstrations,
including the massive 18 Tir (July 9) protests in 199914 and a
December 2006 protest against President Ahmedinejad. On that occasion,
Ahmedinejad had come to speak at Tehran’s Amir Kabir University—
a longtime activist hotbed—and was greeted by students holding
his pictures upside down and chanting “Dictator, go home!”
The increasing popularity and openness of such opposition makes
the regime feel threatened. Its response has been to harass, slander, and
even jail student leaders. On the 2007 anniversary of the 18 Tir protests,
armed security forces attacked the offices of the OCU alumni association
(Advar-e Takhim Vahdat) and arrested twelve people at gunpoint,
among them the current spokesperson of the alumni association, a member
of the high council of the association, and the mother of the head
of the executive committee, who was in the office to inquire about her
son. Six members of the OCU’s central committee were arrested while
taking part in a sit-in protest in front of Amir Kabir University. There
have also been efforts to “pack” student elections with Basij members.
A well-organized, far-reaching state-security apparatus exists within all
universities to monitor and control students at every institutional level.
Each campus has a disciplinary committee that comprises the university
president, vice-president, a representative of the Supreme Leader, and
faculty and student representatives—the latter two typically appointed
by the university president. Under Ahmedinejad, these committees have
become the prime tool for harassing regime critics amid the ranks of
students, more than three-hundred of whom have been punished for political
reasons.
Monitoring committees consisting of the university president and
agents of the Supreme Leader and the Science Ministry decide which
student groups to allow and which to ban, while regime-appointed University
Cultural Councils issue permits for meetings, seminars, and conferences.
Both of the committees and the cultural councils have increasingly
been used to control and pressure student activists. The Science
Ministry’s Central Inspection Committee (known as the Gozinesh) assesses
the personal backgrounds and beliefs of all university students.
Recently, this body has been barring some students from registering, and
has forced others to sign declarations saying that they will avoid political
activities during their studies. Lastly and perhaps most insidiously,
the Intelligence Ministry hires “guardians” (herasat) to identify and spy
on students who are critical of the regime. No student can be sure that
his or her private life is safe from official prying, or that he or she will
not be reported to the judicial or security organs by the government’s
network of campus informers.
In addition to these directly repressive tactics, the regime plays a game
of “divide and rule” meant to foster splits between democratic forces and
civil society. When groups such as the student movement gain popularity
and build bridges to women’s groups or off-campus youth, the regime does
all it can to wreck these ties and root out these elements. Rumors are spread
about women activists’ private lives in order to isolate them from other
groups, stories are planted that the student movement is too radical and
does not care about labor or gender rights, and labor activists are told that
they will lose their jobs if they attend events organized by student or women’s
groups. The Islamic Republic has been able to withstand a two-term
reformist presidency and a reformist-dominated parliament, but appears to
realize that stopping a democratic movement which goes beyond political
parties and has a grassroots base in Iranian society will be harder.
Is There a Way Forward?
In analyzing Iran, there is always the danger of underestimating the
Islamic Republic’s survival skills. Its demise has been predicted many
times—during the tumultuous early years after the shah fell, during the
Iran-Iraq War, after Khomeini’s death, and during Khatami’s presidency—
yet in each case the regime managed to endure. It would be ill-conceived
to point to Iran’s modernizing youth and a growing student movement as
evidence of the regime’s inevitable collapse. They are good signs for the
future of democracy in Iran—ones that have a worried set of powerholders
scrambling to counteract their influence—but it will take time and energy
to organize these promising pieces into a greater democracy movement.
Efforts to do so are underway, but it will not be an easy struggle.
One modest way in which the international community can help is
by encouraging cultural and student exchanges. Engaging the Iranian
people directly and bypassing the political tensions between Iran and the
West, particularly the United States, can help to weaken the isolation of
the populace that the regime craves in order to survive. These measures
can include sponsoring conferences where academics and civil society
actors from Iran can interact with counterparts from the international
community, and easing student-visa restrictions so that Iranians can
come to study in the United States and other parts of the West. These exchanges
should go both ways. Westerners should be encouraged to learn
more about Iranian culture and history in university offerings, and more
resources should be allocated for students to study Farsi. Americans in
particular may be pleasantly surprised to learn that ordinary Iranians differ
widely from the public persona that the regime puts forward, and that
especially among the youth, Iran is home to perhaps the greatest degree
of pro-American sentiment in the entire Middle East.
Foreign media should also be urged to cover aspects of Iran aside
from Ahmedinejad’s nuclear saber-rattling and Holocaust denials. Increasingly,
intrepid journalists are traveling to Iran and are reporting
on the real situation within the country and among the population. This
sort of journalism needs to be encouraged. Thankfully, the December
۲۰۰۶ student protests at Amir Kabir University garnered a surprising
amount of media attention. Coverage of these protests and other types of
opposition help to show brave Iranians—who often risk their lives and
well-being to speak out against the government—that the international
community is paying attention and that their efforts are not in vain. It
is important for nongovernmental organizations and advocacy groups
outside Iran to show solidarity with and moral support for groups such
as the prodemocratic students’ movement. Making Iran’s struggle for
democracy as global an issue as the nuclear one can bolster the forces
for democracy within Iran and play a role in the Iranian people’s quest
for freedom and human rights.
The Iranian student movement itself can and should take several steps
to strengthen its ties with other parts of the democracy movement, specifically
to take advantage of potential support among the young. First
and foremost, the student movement must find a way to rise above the
factionalism that permeates Iranian politics. The aim should be to foster
a basic intramovement solidarity that rests on shared democratic beliefs
and sets aside other ideological considerations as less important. A new,
overarching group similar in structure to the OCU could even be established
to reach this end. Second, the student movement should work to
involve in its activities other civil society groups such as labor and women’s
organizations. Doing so will require expanding the language of their
discourse to include workers’ rights and gender rights, not just issues that
concern students and general demands for democracy.
Third, the student movement should reach out to those who are not
yet in universities by persuading them that the totalitarian system of government
currently in place is the root cause of their grievances, and that
democracy is the only viable alternative. In fact, this should apply not
merely to those below college age, but to the whole populace, many of
whom see democracy as an elite concept that cannot address their realworld
(and often economic) problems. Existing student groups should
even consider setting up branches in primary schools in order to rally
as many Iranians as possible to the democracy movement at the earliest
possible age. Finally, both students and the larger democracy movement
must be prepared for the violent repressive tactics that the government
will use to quash any organized threat to its rule. While the concept of
civil disobedience is certainly not unknown to Iran’s democratic forces,
this idea must be emphasized and practiced if the democracy movement
is to have any hope of breaking the regime’s stranglehold on power.
NOTES
۱٫ All population figures are drawn from data made available by the Statistical Center
of Iran at www.sci.org.ir.
۲٫ These data come from the research center of Iranian parliament and are cited at
www.noandish.com/com.php?id=9605.
۳٫ “Welcome to Satellite,” Shargh Daily Press (Tehran), 28 May 2006. Available at
www.roshangari.net/autosite/ds.cgi?art=20040526004741/20040526004741.html.
۴٫ Cited in Liora Hendleman-Baayur, “Promises and Perils of Weblogistan: Online
Personal Journals and the Islamic Republic of Iran,” Middle East Review of International
Affairs 11 (June 2007). Available at http://meria.idc.ac.il/journal/2007/issue2/jv11no2a6.
html.
۵٫ Jared Cohen, “Iran’s Young Opposition: Youth in Post-Revolutionary Iran,” SAIS
Review 16 (Summer–Fall 2006): 3–۱۶٫
۶٫ “Unemployment in Young People” [English translation], Fars News Agency (7
and13 July 2005). Available at www.inroozha.com/news/000059.php.
۷٫ Behrooz Karezooni, “Debate About Announced Unemployment Rate in Iran,”
[English translation] Radio Farda, 1 June 2007. Available at www.radiofarda.com/Article/
۲۰۰۷/۰۶/۰۱/o1_job_in_iran.html.
۸٫ Data from the 2006 national census are cited at www.farsnews.com/newstext.
php?nn=8602250307.
۹٫ “Dating in Darkness,” Shargh Daily Press, 20 August 2006.
۱۰٫ Gozaar, June 2007 issues, available at www.gozaar.org/template1.php?id=646.
۱۱٫ The body that decides foreign policy is the National Security Council, which does
not include the president. In order to act, the Council must receive final approval from the
Supreme Leader. All universities are managed by the Council for Cultural Revolution,
whose members, aside from the president, are direct appointees of the Supreme Leader.
۱۲٫ All data on student population are drawn from the official figures of Iran’s Ministry
of Science, Research, and Technology.
۱۳٫ Ministry of Science, Research and Technology. Available at www.irphe.ir/fa/Statistics/
gozide%20amar.htm.
۱۴٫ These protests began when students at Tehran University gathered peacefully in
the streets to demonstrate against the closing of the main reformist newspaper, Salam.
Police officers and plainclothes security forces violently attacked them and raided the
student dormitiories. Following these assaults, more students at Tehran University and
also Tabriz University took to the streets to decry the beatings and arrests. The five days
of protests, which involved up to fifty-thousand students and other citizens, amounted to
the largest set of street demonstrations that Iran had seen since the days of the Islamic
Revolution. They ended only after the regime brought to bear still more violence and arrested
more than a thousand students.
This Article was written in common with Mr.H. Graham Underwood and published in Journal of Democracy