January 10-2014
The Rohani Administration has begun to reverse the limits on teaching the social sciences imposed in many Iranian universities in recent years.
More than two years after Allameh Tabatabai University announced that it would no longer offer a number of humanities programs, one of its department heads announced Friday that the programs are being restored.
The Iranian Students News Agency (ISNA) reported that the head of social sciences at the university announced that all the scrapped programs are being restored and the university will begin accepting students in these programs starting next September.
ISNA did not list the programs in question. However, two years ago, under the university’s former leadership, philosophy, business administration, psychology and journalism were among the fields dropped.
The move to restrict the humanities in universities came after the 2009 election protests, when Supreme Leader Ali Khamenehi pointed his finger at the universities and specifically at the humanities as breeding grounds for anti-Islamic thought and dissent.
Following the inauguration of Hassan Rohani in August, the hardline chancellor of Allameh Tabatabai was removed along with some other hardline university heads.
Khamenehi has not said anything publicly about the reversal of the treatment of the social sciences.
Allameh Tabatabai University is a public university in Tehran under the supervision of the Ministry of Science, which oversees all higher education. It is the largest specialized state social sciences university in Iran and the Middle East, with 17,000 students and 500 full-time faculty members. The university is named for Allameh Tabatabai, one of the leading modern thinkers of Shia Islam, who died in 1981.
The university was established in 1983 by combining 24 previously independent colleges.