EDITORIAL – School’s out for liberals

Whether it’s enriching uranium or ignoring the United Nations, Iran just can’t keep itself… Whether it’s enriching uranium or ignoring the United Nations, Iran just can’t keep itself out of the international spotlight these days.

And now President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has added teachers and students to his to-do list. Yesterday the out of touch president called for a “purge of liberal and secular teachers” from the universities of Iran, giving the metaphorical middle finger to the rest of the world.

“Today, students should shout at the president and ask why liberal and secular university lecturers are present in the universities,” Ahmadinejad said, according to the Islamic Republic News Agency.

It’s important to consider Middle-Eastern liberalism in a different framework than Western liberalism. These “liberals” are fighting for rights that we consider standard in the Western world.

Ahmadinejad blames secular teaching for the lack of reform in Iranian schools over the past 150 years. This call to purge is nothing but a loss for Iranians, who are living in a psudo-theocracy. It’s not that we want Iran to embrace Western ideals – not at all. It’s just that by continuing their isolationist ways, they are shutting themselves off from the global society, causing the rift between Iran and the rest of the world to grow.

By denying secular teaching, Ahmadinejad will succeed in his goal to proliferate his extremist ideology, but he’ll cut his country off from making any sort of scientific advances – and in the modern world, that’s how countries accumulate power. It’s suspect that after Ahmadinejad justified his use of nuclear technology as being a means to make scientific discoveries and cure diseases not too long ago, and now he is working to rid his country of progressive, liberal and secular teachers and students.

And besides all of that, he’ll also succeed in producing ill-prepared young leaders who fear the outside world. This climate is a breeding ground for miscommunication and terrorism.

So how does Ahmadinejad have the right to do this? As the president of Iran, he’s also the head of the country’s Council of Cultural Revolution. Earlier this year, he retired dozens of liberal educators and appointed a cleric as the head of the country’s oldest institution, Tehran University. All of this was met by the protest of students, who have also become the target of the president’s de-liberalizing agenda. Ahmadinejad has no qualms about his decision – he’s even encouraged students to pressure their liberal peers to step in line or get out of town.

Will the United States have much to say about this recent turn of events in Iran? Who knows, we’re still trying to come up with a solid plan for those nukes. But can we really be surprised that this is happening when Ahmadinejad made a campaign promise of a “more Islamic-oriented” Iran? If Ahmadinejad succeeds in turning the clocks back to a 1980s Ayatollah Iran, it won’t be good for any of us, especially Iranians, who were set back during the last wave of radicalism.

Let’s hope that Iran can find a way to preserve its faith in Islam and function in the global community. It’s pretty evident that it won’t be with this president, but perhaps progressive thinking won’t die a nasty death and someone a little more reasonable will assume power.