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The Daily OrangeWait and see: Iranian SU professor doesn't want to return to Iran but he might have to
By Stephen Dockery
Posted: 10/22/08, 4:29 AM EST Section: News
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Now his future as a professor hangs in the balance. The future of his family, his wife and two teenage sons does as well.
His visa to teach in the United States will expire in a year. He will be forced to return home for at least two years. So will his family. Their U.S. status depends on if he is able to change his visa, Bashiriyeh said.
Bashiriyeh doesn't want to go back.
"I think that the future will not be very much different from what it is now in Iran," Bashiriyeh said. "Unless there are some unexpected events or developments. As a result I don't honestly know what I am going to do myself."
He took a long pause. He speaks haltingly in English, his second language.
"So, I always wait and see."
Bashiriyeh, an Iranian, has taught in SU's Middle Eastern studies department since 2006 after he took sabbatical leave from the University of Tehran. His colleagues at SU consider him a premier academic in the field of democratization in the Middle East.
The Iranian government recently targeted Bashiriyeh for his liberal writing. He supports democratic governments, and defines himself as "not-religious," two risky positions to take in a theocratic state.
Progressive intellectuals and journalists have been persecuted in Iran since the 1979 revolution. In 2007, academic Haleh Esfandiari, an Iranian and director of the Middle East program at the academic think-tank, Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, was detained in Iran. She was held for 105 days in solitary confinement on charges of harming national security before she was allowed to return to the United States, according to a CNN article from Sept. 9, 2007.
The humanitarian organization Human Rights Watch has called for accountability in the Iranian government's arrests and oppression of dissidents and intellectuals.
"Prosecution of dissidents for their peaceful beliefs and opinions has also intensified in recent years," the organization wrote in a Sept. 18 press release. "Human rights defenders are routinely harassed and imprisoned for reporting and documenting rights violations."
The Iranian government emphasizes conservative religious credentials and tolerates little dissent, Bashiriyeh said. Even those in charge at the University of Tehran are religious officials.
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Svetlana Peshkova
posted 10/24/08 @ 12:21 PM EST
I would like to respond to one part of the article as I find it extremely misleading - specifically the points made about Sufism by the writer and Pr. (Continued…)
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