I subscribe to the weekday newsfeed of Inside Higher Ed and this bit of information came across through them today. Quick now -- what influential political leader said this:
He called the humanities a field of study that "promotes skepticism and doubt in religious principles and beliefs," and that it was worrying that almost XXXX of university students in XXXX were seeking degrees in the humanities.
The Xs mark out the words "two-thirds" and "Iran" (I figured you would know that 2/3ds of US students don't study humanities and the whole point of guessing would be defeated if I told you outright it was Iran). That is right, that loveable conservative leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the Supreme Leader of Iran. But it sounds like David Horowitz, doesn't it?
That is right -- in the "great Satan" that is Iran, again our conservatives and their conservatives share common fears. Fears that people who study at college (particularly, but not exclusively, in the Humanities) are taught to reason and think, and evaluate evidence, and when they do this they do not agree with the received wisdom, which equates with questioning religious principles and beliefs. They might not agree with you, so don't let them learn about anyone else's ideas.
The article Inside Higher Ed links to is from Radio Free Europe. It reports that the number of students admitted to humanities programs in Iran will be restricted. I wonder how that will happen? Will it be the best of the pool who will be allowed to go into those fields, or will it be the ones who come from the most believing households, or those who have shown themselves to accept the wisdom of their elders themselves without questioning?
Saeed Peyvandi, a Paris-based expert on education, says that that the Science Ministry has started a coordinated, centralized policy to monitor and control universities, including students, professors, chancellors, and curriculums.
Peyvandi adds that as a result of such policies, "independence of universities" will make no sense in Iran anymore.
But of course, what would he know? He does, after all, live in FRANCE!
The article reports that the Science Minister of Iran said in March that "only academics who had "practical commitment" to the principle of "velayat-e faqih, or the rule of the supreme leader, could teach at universities."
I know that periodically people here parallel totalitarian regimes with our own right wing crazies. This is just another instance, one I am putting out there so you can examine the evidence. Being someone who teaches in the humanities, and whose diaries on teaching Islamic material were once linked to by a horrified blogger as an example of what is WRONG with American education (obviously because I taught it as simply another religion and not a horrible, horrifying terrorist cult), I find the parallels in rhetoric rather entertaining. For the moment, I thank (whatever deities there might be, even if there are none) that I teach and live (most of the time, anyway!) in the United States.