IRAN: Purge of universities feared

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 curricula deemed "un-Islamic", according to academics and political analysts inside and outside Iran, reports Michael Slackman for The New York Times.

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."
Full report on The New York Times site