Middle East studies in the News

A Scholar Detained [on Haleh Esfandiari]

by Andy Guess
Inside Higher Education
May 22, 2007

http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2007/05/22/iran

http://www.campus-watch.org/article/id/3430

When news broke that Iran had incarcerated Haleh Esfandiari in a notoriously brutal prison in northern Tehran on May 8, politicians, including the presidential hopefuls Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, spoke out for the Iranian-American scholar's release. So did a coalition of faculty members, with a letter to Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

And just as academics began stepping up their public criticisms of the Iranian government's actions on Monday with an additional flurry of letters and petitions, reports surfaced that Esfandiari — director of the Middle East Program at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, in Washington — had been charged with "seeking to topple the ruling Islamic establishment." Despite the escalations and some calls for an academic boycott, no serious plans for the latter seem to be in the works so far.

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Note: Articles listed under "Middle East studies in the News" provide information on current developments concerning Middle East studies on North American campuses. These reports do not necessarily reflect the views of Campus Watch and do not necessarily correspond to Campus Watch's critique.

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