40 Tehran University professors retired in past six months

Tehran University

Deputy Treasurer of Tehran University announced today that about forty faculty members of the university have retired since the beginning of the Iranian year in March.

ISNA reports that Mohammad Hossein Moqimi said that all these individuals were retired according to regulations and legal provisions.

He added that some of the professors had put in requests for retirement and others with over 30 years as associate professors had to be retired.

The Tehran University official went on to add that 150 new faculty members have been hired in the same period. He claimed the university has never undergone such growth in any period.

He stressed that the retirement of professors must not be seen as a political issue.

In the past months , heads of over 20 universities and education centres have been changed.

Ministry of Science and Technology has described these developments as a way of strengthening higher education while the opposition has referred to them as political cleansing.

The opposition contends that many professors have been forced to resign due to fierce pressure on them in the workplace.

The universities have been prominent targets of post-election crackdown since the Islamic Republic establishment identified them as a main source of growth and organization of the opposition forces.

Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Khamenei also called for fundamental changes in Iran's universities following the widespread protests against the alleged fraud in the re-election of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in June of 2009.

While reformist websites report the launch of numerous committees for political cleansing of university faculties, Iran's minister of science, Kamran Daneshjoo, has repeatedly announced that the universities will not tolerate professors that are not "in tune with the Islamic Republic regime."