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a crowd marching in protest in Iran

Students of Amirkabir University in Tehran protesting on September 20, 2022 (Image Darafsh, via Wikimedia Commons)

October 12, 2022

Dear Students, Faculty, and Staff,

Many of you are aware of the current civil unrest in Iran arising from the death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini (known to her family as Zhina), an Iranian Kurd, on September 16, following three days in police custody for violation of the official dress code. Protesters—women, men, students, and people of all ages—have come into the streets across Iran in reaction to Amini’s death and the Islamic Republic’s long history of repression and human rights abuses against women in particular. Clashes between government security forces and protesters have led to the injury and arrest of thousands of protestors and the death of hundreds.

At Amherst, we prize free, open inquiry, including dissent. Repression and violence against peaceful protestors run deeply counter to our values. Moreover, as a college president, I am especially disturbed by—and condemn—the attacks on Iranian universities such as the Sharif University of Technology, an institution that has a proud history of advancing scientific knowledge, as well as the closing of all schools in Iranian Kurdistan and the widespread arrest of Iranian schoolchildren, especially schoolgirls, by Iranian security forces.

I hope you will join a community conversation on Friday, October 21, from 1:30-2:30 p.m. in Pruyne Auditorium, Fayerweather Hall, to learn more about and discuss the situation and its ramifications. Joining by Zoom will be political anthropologist and Middle East scholar Negar S. Razavi, Public Humanities Postdoctoral Research Associate at the Kaplan Institute for the Humanities at Northwestern University and a member of the editorial team at Jadaliyya, an independent ezine produced by the Arab Studies Institute. Dr. Razavi’s talk, entitled “The Iranian Feminist Protests in Global Context,” will be followed by a Q&A moderated by Professor of Middle Eastern History, Monica Ringer. This event is sponsored by the Office of the Provost and Dean of the Faculty.

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Michael signature

Michael A. Elliott
President