AAUP PROTESTS ARREST OF IRANIAN SCHOLAR

Academe, Jul/Aug 2006 by Maloney, Wendi

In May, scholarly associations and higher education groups, including the AAUP, wrote to Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran's supreme leader, to object to the arrest of Ramin Jahanbegloo, head of the Department of Contemporary Studies at the Cultural Research Bureau in Teheran. Jahanbegloo is author of more than twenty books in Persian, English, and French on European and Iranian intellectual history and political philosophy. He also frequently contributes to international newspapers and journals and has consistently pushed for the United States and Europe to adopt a less confrontational approach in dealing with Iran, according to the Middle East Studies Association (MESA) and the International Society for Iranian Studies (ISIS).

Iranian authorities detained Jahanbegloo at Teheran Airport in late April. Government officials have reportedly stated that he is undergoing interrogations and that charges against him will be filed afterward. MESA has voiced concern that government officials are in the process of coercing confessions from him. "Given the arbitrary and unusual nature" of Jahanbegloo's detention, "we are compelled to conclude that his arrest is connected to his scholarly and intellectual pursuits," wrote Juan R. I. Cole, president of MESA, and Janet Afary, president of ISIS, to Khamenei in May.

In a separate May letter to Khamenei, Roger Bowen, the AAUP's general secretary, wrote that "the arrest of Jahanbegloo offends international standards of academic freedom and suggests that the government of Iran is intolerant of competing ideas and insensitive to democratic standards. We call upon you to release him from detention without delay."-W.M.