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manities in Iran’s universities, pursuing a decree from the Supreme Leader to erase Western influences.
Abolfazl Hassani, the director of education development within the Education Ministry, announced Sunday that the regime is reviewing 12 fields with a view to revising how they are taught in the Islamic Republic.
The 12 fields are: law; women’s studies; economics; sociology; media; political science; philosophy; psychology; education; human rights; management; and cultural and artistic administration.
Hassani laid down the problem clearly. As taught in Iran now, these fields are based on “Western culture.” He said, “It is imperative that we revise the content of these disciplines in view of our religious and indigenous ideology and principles.”
He gave no examples of how these academic fields violate Islamic principles. Nor did he say how the economic curriculum or the teaching of management might be altered to make them conform to Islam.
One of the fields he cited was human rights, which is not normally considered an academic discipline, but which is a matter of intense concern in Iran, with officials insisting that the global view of human rights as embraced by the UN is just taken from a Western perspective and ignores the Islamic perspective.
Hassani said the review of those 12 fields should be completed by the end of next summer and that up to 70 percent of the content of those disciplines would be revised.
While the announcement contained no detail, many saw the planned revision as drawing Iran further away from the world-at-large and isolating it intellectually in an effort to insulate it from what many in the regime see as poisonous influences.
In the past, most concern about such poisonous influences has concentrated on such things as Barbie dolls, rock music, t-shirt inscriptions and Hollywood romances. Now the regime seems to want to move up the intellectual chain to take on such things as supply and demand in economics or caste and class in sociology.
While the revisions are underway, Hassani said, no university can open a new school in any of these fields, though universities that currently have them may continue instruction.
A few months ago, Supreme Leader Ali Khamenehi assailed the way the humanities are taught in the Islamic Republic, complaining they were grounded in the Western worldview in such a way as to “spread doubt in the principles of Islamic teaching.” Specifically, he said, “Many disciplines in the humanities are based on principles founded on materialism.”
Hassani’s announcement made clear that Khamenehi was not just griping but was intent on launching a cleansing of the humanities in Iranian universities.
More than half of the students in Iranian universities are studying in the humanities.