World Philosophy Day event in Tehran has a growing number of internationally renowned academics boycotting the event, citing repression of humanities professors in Iran.
University World News, a website about higher education, reported Sunday that top academics say they will stay away from the November 21-23 UNESCO Congress in solidarity with Iranian academics. The issue came to a head last week when a meeting was held in New York to plan an alternative online forum for those unable or unwilling to go.
Earlier this year a number of prominent professors, including German sociologist and philosopher Jürgen Habermas and Canada-based Iranian philosopher Ramin Jahanbegloo, wrote a letter of protest to UNESCO asking that the Congress be moved from Iran.
Iran “should not be considered as a normal rotation of locations, since we are sadly aware, due to a very close experience, how one can be imprisoned and risk one’s life in Iran because of one’s ideas,” they wrote. “A World Philosophy Day could not be held under normal conditions in Iran and many philosophers would not be able to attend freely.”
Jahanbegloo told University World News: “The definition of philosophy itself is critical thinking and free debate. And that is not possible in Iran today.
“At the same time as attacking universities’ humanities programs, the Iranian authorities are saying they are supporting philosophy at the official level. They are seeking legitimacy for their regime, and this is one way for them to legitimize themselves on the world stage. UNESCO should not be allowing them to use [UNESCO] to do this.…
“You cannot practice this kind of philosophy in a society with one dimensional discourse and everything controlled by the state,” said Jahanbegloo, who was imprisoned by the Iranian authorities in 2006 and is now a professor of political science at the University of Toronto.
Jahanbegloo was accused, among other things, of bringing to Iran Western philosophers such as Habermas, Richard Rorty, the late professor of philosophy at Princeton University, and Italian Marxist sociologist and philosopher Antonio Negri.
With many professors forced to resign or retired early, “the humanities have been under attack by the regime which says these academic thinkers are the main inspiration for the Green movement, because they cause young people to question and disbelieve the official ideology,” said Jahanbegloo.
Jahanbegloo said Supreme Leader Ali Khamenehi warned a gathering of professors and university administrators in August 2009 that the humanities was a field of study that “promotes skepticism and doubt in religious principles and beliefs.” Western philosophies in particular created “lack of faith” among Iranian students, Khamenehi said.
German philosopher Otfried Höffe has pulled out as keynote speaker. “Such a step requires not just a good, but a very good reason,” said Höffe, explaining his decision in an article in the German daily Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung.
Höffe said it was due to former Majlis Speaker Gholam-Ali Haddad-Adel being named by President Ahmadi-nejad as convener. “The risk is that World Philosophy Day will be misused by the [Iranian] president as a propaganda platform. I shouldn’t be helping them to do that,” said Höffe, a professor of philosophy at Tübingen University in Germany.
Jahanbegloo said with Haddad-Adel presiding, “There is not going to be much of a philosophical debate, more an ideological discourse.”
Although the Iranian delegation to UNESCO in Paris has said “the participation of high-level philosophers from all regions is welcomed in this event,” University World News said Habermas was named in an indictment by the Iranian state prosecutor as a “co-conspirator” in the post-election protests because his “dangerous” ideas were conducive to toppling the Islamic Republic.
Jahanbegloo and others said the boycott had support from many scholars and academics in Europe, America, Asia and the Middle East.
“They are not going to Iran in solidarity with the rest of us,” said Hamid Dabashi, a professor of Iranian and comparative literature at New York’s Columbia University: “Scores of independent-minded scholars have been arrested. Scores of us cannot go to Iran without going to jail.
“If I go to Iran, I will not be landing at the airport I will be landing in jail,” Dabashi told University World News. “But even if I could go to Iran it is obvious I would want to see pressing political and intellectual issues of the day being discussed freely.”
Although many UNESCO insiders say the outcry has caused embarrassment to the UN organization in Paris, UNESCO says officially it is powerless to cancel the event, which has the backing of its member states.
This week Dabashi convened a meeting of academics in New York to organize a parallel event to draw in academics who cannot attend the event in Teheran. To be held online and via video-link it would include “those in Asia, Africa and the Middle East who want to be part of world philosophy,” who cannot attend the main event.
World Philosophy Day was initiated by UNESCO in 2005, to be held on the birthday of the Greek philosopher Socrates. Previous events were held in Morocco and Turkey, sparking robust debates on differences between Eastern and Western thinking.