Challenging the Ideological State: On Human Sciences in Post- Revolutionary Iran

That the universities, and specifically the Humanities, are the agents of a “soft war” conducted by the West against Iran and its Islamic state. By exploring some of the developments which took place as a result of the enduring clashes between the state and the universities in the Islamic Republic of Iran, this paper investigates the credibility of this claim in the second wave of an “Islamization” of the Humanities. It argues that while the first wave of the Cultural Revolution aimed at the de-westernization of the universities, the second wave—which has sped up after the rise of the Green Movement in 2009– seeks first and foremost to increase the control of the state over the universities and suppress critical voices. Launching the so-called Cultural Revolution right after the Islamic revolution of 1979, the Islamic Republic closed down the universities for some years in order to purge unwanted forces and replace the secular western milieu of the university with an Islamic one. This campaign weakened the Iranian universities and tremendously decreased the country’s scientific capacity. On the other hand, due to the suppressed atmosphere in the universities, a number of intellectuals such as Abdolkarim Soroush, who were once the theorists of the Cultural Revolution, gradually abandoned the universities and the established ideology of the state, becoming instead harsh critics of the government’s policies towards the Humanities. This trend ultimately led to the formation of non-university based discussions in the Humanities in the late 1980s and 1990s, which were produced in intellectual circles, journals, and newspapers. The movement had an enormous impact on many Iranian students of the Humanities and other disciplines, who were affected by this movement rather than by university professors. This generation was very much responsible for the formation of the reform movement in Iran in the late 1990s. The reform movement, in turn, led to a partial opening of the universities. In consequence the suppression of the universities by the state increased, especially after the Green Movement of 2009. This newest wave, however, is neither directed nor theorized by intellectuals, but rather is controlled by the military commanders of the Islamic Republic Guardian Corps.