The Universities are Alive

The student movement makes up a major and vital node of the Green Movement body both in terms of quality and quantity, because it serves as a cross-point for other individual movements such as women, labor, and ethnic group movements. The student movement effectively creates a space for a coalition on undecided positions among various groups.

“The Movement Year” is undoubtedly the most suitable name for the past year in Iran.  While the Iranian democratic movement is known to the world by its symbolic green color, a large part of it is composed of individual movements –such as the women’s, student, teacher, and labor movements –that formed years ago to pursue the goal of civil liberties. The student movement, as perhaps the oldest and most influential civil movement in Iran, has been particularly notable in terms of impacting and being affected by the Green Movement.

Arash Bahmani, a former student activist and journalist, points to this reciprocal interactivity between the Green Movement and student movement: “Presently, these two freedom-seeking movements have a distinct impact on each other. The active presence of students and their participation in demonstrations and protests has made the Green Movement more dynamic. Meanwhile, the Green Movement has injected energy and drive into the universities and engaged a broad range of students, including some who were previously apolitical. Student activism on campuses has become a point of hope for the Green Movement, and the support of Green activists for the universities has made students realize they are not alone and that their struggle has an impact on society.”

A key question here is whether the relation between student activism and the Green Movement is horizontal or vertical; that is, do they equally and mutually propel each other forward or does the student movement follow and fall under the Green Movement?

Morteza Eslahchi, a former chair of the Students Islamic Association at Allameh Tabatabaei, believes the student movement is a subset of the Green Movement that shoulders the burden of expanding discourse on civil [peaceful] movements into the depths of society, while looking to the stances taken by Green leaders in order to determine the policies and tactics of the student movement.

There are several advantages to this mutual influence, Eslahchi says. “The groups and movements that define themselves [as included] under the umbrella of the Green Movement are each conscious of their place and act according to their scope of social influence. This fortunately helps prevent confusion in the internal discourse of the Green Movement.”

The student movement makes up a major and vital node of the Green Movement body both in terms of quality and quantity, because it serves as a cross-point for other individual movements such as women, labor, and ethnic group movements. The student movement effectively creates a space for a coalition on undecided positions among various groups.

Pouyan Mahmoudian, a student activist at Amir Kabir, adds: “By including a wide range of political persuasions, demands, and discourses among the factionalized political elite, the student movement has managed to understand various forces and bring them together, then transmit this [understanding and awareness] through word-of-mouth to the general public. At the same time, while the Iranian psyche is guarded when it comes to political parties and groups, people continue to trust and believe in the student movement and student activism. Therefore, the institution of the University has a power of outreach and influence that is in many ways stronger than that of political parties.”

Majid Tavakoli, a classmate of Pouyan’s, was arrested on December 7, 2009 [the day of nationwide campus protests marking Student’s Day]. In an article he wrote from inside prison about the students’ impact on society, Tavakoli writes: “In addition to their roles as critics and the role of student media in [disseminating] news and information, students play a central role in organizing any major protest, and have maintained a brave, unflagging presence at all protests. If the [Green] movement becomes stagnant, students have the power to revive it; they are the part of the movement that guarantees its unending course. At the core of well-planned, consciously organized protests are these very students.”

The student movement: transition from the elections

Most observers and student activists believe that compared to its earlier years, the student movement went through a period of stagnation during Ahmadinejad’s first term in office. This decline was a result of political disillusionment [of the post-reform era] in society as well as the Ahmadinejad administration’s policy of cracking down on students. Student organizations were banned, including Daftar Tahkim Vahdat (Office to Consolidate Unity), and a great number of student activists were arrested, expelled, and barred from [continuing] education. More than 100 students of various political leanings were detained in 2007 alone. In such a climate, the presidential election campaigns breathed new life into the embattled student movement.

Eslahchi describes this change: “A few months before election season, the Islamic Republic usually allows for a minimal amount of breathing space in order to warm people’s desire to participate in the elections. After years of repression, Iran’s student movement seized this chance and entered the [political] arena. The Office to Consolidate Unity (OCU) had boycotted the 2005 [presidential] election, but the majority of student activists decided to participate in the 2009 election and support the reformist candidates. Having taken this stance, many student activists volunteered for the campaigns [of Mir Hossein Mousavi and Mehdi Karroubi]. Thus, after four years of passivity, the university became active again.”

This energy and enthusiasm, however, turned into widespread but high-risk protests at the universities in the days following the election.

Bahmani, an OCU member, recalls that: “The post-election events brought all students nakedly face-to-face with politics. As student movement leaders were arrested, there are now as many student leaders as there are students. The widespread student protests on campuses across the country are a testament to this claim [i.e. because these protests were not organized centrally by the OCU but at the local level]. Despite the crackdown, these protests persist. It is particularly interesting to note that the protests spread to universities in the provinces which had been politically inactive for years, as well as to Azad [private universities], which is heavily security-oriented.”

Student movement resistance against government crackdown

The policy of clampdown on universities was pursued more widely and systematically after the elections, with the smallest student activist meetings tracked down and arrested. Therefore, all of the organizational and communication networks of student activists have been destroyed. Of course, this void has been largely filled by [students] using online social networking sites, and students use web-based entry calls to organize their protest plans.

What are the government’s goals in repressing the student movement? Eslahchi points to two capacities of the student movement: the power to organize protests, and political clout and social status as a reference.  He says, “the Islamic Republic believes in society that is a shapeless mass. This is why it always boasts of ‘a people ever present in politics,’ but never lets this people organize themselves within professional, civil, or political groups. But the university, due to its unique features, has always had minimal organization yet has played the role of a political party in regards to [having an impact on] social formation. This is why many consider the student movement to be the prime reason for the [landslide victory] of Mohammad Khatami in 1997. Many in fact consider the student movement as one of the wings of reform, alongside the press. The regime, aware of the power of the student movement in social mobilization, thus represses it.”

Concerning the student movement’s political clout and social status, Eslahchi adds: “after the election coup, Iran’s youth has been the spine of the protests. Iran’s population is young and educated, and this has caused the youth to gain a referential social status. Before this, the youth generally followed their families’ views in taking political stances. This trend has reversed to a large extent –now, many families confidently look to their children for their views on political issues.”

Pouyan Mahmoudian points out that the government’s crackdown has been fairly effective. Yet he believes that given the widespread desire for protest in society, students activism will never be completely extinguished, but merely change its operational methods and solutions for organizing and creating networks.

Bahmani also agrees that the government’s repression of university is a wrong policy that will backfire by radicalizing activists. This is the same thought behind the well-known student motto: “the university is alive.”
Regarding the effect of repression on the student movement, Eslahchi believes that, “as many student activists have been jailed or expelled from university, it can be said that the clampdowns have been effective. Naturally, such repression cuts the scale and quality of student activism and prevents the transfer of experience from political students to the rest of the student body.”

He adds that, “the wide scale of repression has somewhat cooled the university climate. But this is surely not sustainable in the long term. Today, the circumstances have changed and a majority of students are politicized, so long-term total control over the universities is impossible.”

The most distinctive feature of the Iranian civil uprising in the course of the past year has been its evolution–an evolution that can also be seen and traced in the student movement. Yet, given that the government has managed to dishearten the brave activists of the universities with threats of arrest, imprisonment, expulsion and prohibition from study, it is up to green activists to write articles, conduct interviews, and provide literature and materials to help spur on the maturity and fruition of the student movement.