on the campus of one of Canada’s most prominent colleges, Carleton University in Ottawa, promptly an angry outpouring of fury, mostly from Iranian-Canadians, however,
The university quickly said it had nothing to do with the conference, which was sponsored by a student group. It turns out the student group is headed by the son of the cultural counselor at the Iranian embassy.
Ten Iranian-Canadian academics have written a letter to Carleton University President Roseann O’Reilly Runte criticizing the university for allowing a conference honoring Ayatollah Khomeini to be held on her campus.
They wrote, “The outcome of the Ayatollah’s ‘thought’ for the academics in Iran today are forced retirement of the faculty, the expulsion or intimidation of students … and, in many cases, their imprisonment.”
But the dispute turned from an argument over Khomeini’s prescriptions to a debate over the role of a university in public debate.
The conference, titled “The Contemporary Awakening and Imam Khomeini’s Thoughts,” was organized by the Iranian embassy in Ottawa and the Iranian Cultural Association of Carleton University, a student group headed by Ehsan Mohammadi, son of Hamid Mohammadi, who is the cultural counselor at the Iranian embassy in Ottawa.
Those wishing to attend the conference were asked to email the “Cultural Center of the Islamic Republic of Iran,” which is run out of the Iranian embassy.
Carleton University spokesman Steven Reid told Maclean’s magazine, the university was not involved in the event, which was held on university property and listed on Carleton’s website. The university issued a statement saying that views expressed by speakers at events organized by student groups do not reflect the views of the university as a whole.
Reid later told the Ottawa Citizen the university would intervene if a student group was promoting hate, illegal acts, or violations of the Canadian Human Rights Code.
Maclean’s reported that speakers included Kurt Anders Richardson who said Khomeini “was the one who emphasized the equality of human beings, the equality of male and female.”
The letter objecting to the fact that Carleton even permitted the conference on its campus included among its signatories Ramin Jahanbegloo, a professor at the University of Toronto who was arrested and jailed in Tehran for four months in 2006.
The letter to Carleton’s president said, “You may be aware that by the fatwa Ayatollah Khomeini ordered the mass execution of several thousands of political prisoners in 1988.
“Through his ‘cultural revolution’ following the 1979 revolution, all Iranian universities were closed down for two years and thousands of faculty and students expelled, and many of them jailed, executed or forced into exile.”
The letter said, “We support, and many of us are engaged in, international academic collaborations. However, we think reputable academic institutions have a moral obligation not to turn a blind eye on atrocities committed against their colleagues in other countries. Providing forum to individuals, who under the pretext of academic freedom, propagate the ideas and values of a regime that is known for its violation of all standards of academic freedom and rights, is far from promoting academic debates.”
In addition to Jahanbegloo, the letter, dated June 11, was signed by: Payam Akhavan, Faculty of Law, McGill University; Amir Hassanpour, ret, University of Toronto; Haideh Moghissi, Equity Studies, Trudeau Fellow, York University; Shahrzad Mojab, OISE, University of Toronto; Mo Mojahedi, Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Toronto; Omid Peyrow-Shabani, Philosophy, University of Guelph; Saeed Rahnema, Political Science and Public Policy, York University; Peyman Vahabzadeh, Sociology, University of Victoria; and Farrokh Zandi, Schulich Business School, York University.
