Iran’s Intelligence Minister has criticized the former administration’s campaign of firing university professors.
ILNA reports that Mahmoud Alavi said in a visit to Fars Province: “If the country is now suffering from a scientific decline, it is because of the elimination of experienced professors that has gone on in the past.”
Alavi stressed that the loss of expert professors will have adverse long-term effects.
Under the Ahmadinejad administration, 350 professors were fired or forced into early retirement every year. Kamaran Daneshjoo, Ahmadinejad’s minister of science, would repeatedly stress that professors who were not “in line with the regime” or did not “believe in the leadership of the clergy” would be eliminated from the universities.
The treatment of professors was described as “discriminatory, degrading and immoral” by activists.
