With about one and a half million students, Azad University in Tehran is the biggest institution of education in Iran. During the last weeks it has seen incidents without comparison as Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has tried to bring the University which name Azad means "Free" under state control.
At first it looked like Ahmadinejad's plan to reshuffle the University's board of trustees would succeed. The Supreme Council of the Cultural Revolution as well as the government's High Council for Education had passed decisions to change the ordinance of the University according to Ahmadinejad's will, who is by the way head of the Supreme Council of the Culural Revolution. But supreme leader Ayatollah Khamenei has now used his power to nullify these decisions. Therefore Azad University remains free of governmental control.
You can easily see that the incidents regarding the Azad University are highly political. The university was founded by former president Ayatollah Hashemi Rafsanjani in 1983 and its board of trustees includes Mir Hossein Mousavi, who was Ahmadinejad's opponent during his last presidential campaign, as well as several moderate conservatives.
Tuesday, July 6, 2010
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