Iranian Social Scientists Fear That Purge Is on the Way

Political-science and other social-science departments at Iranian universities are bracing for a purge with the start of the academic year this month, The New York Times reported today. In a talk on Sunday before a gathering of students and professors, the country’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, singled out those disciplines as un-Islamic and said that they promoted secularism. University campuses were the focal point of much of the protest movement that erupted after the disputed presidential election in June, and early in President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s first term many professors were forced out of their posts by the government.