3 - Tehran University, 1970–1974

Summary

A Tale of Global Radicalism

I was only a few months into my time as a student at the Faculty of Law and Political Science at Tehran University when, on December 7, 1970, student protests and police attacks rocked the campus. I had long imagined myself performing the rites of political initiation expected of all student activists, like demonstrating in annual commemoration of the three university students, Mostafa Bozorgnia, Ahmad Ghandchi, and Mehdi Shariatrazavi, fatally shot by police on December 7, 1953, for protesting, in the wake of the 1953 coup d’état, Vice President Nixon's impending visit to Tehran. In their memory, this day was marked Student Day (ruz-e daneshju).

The Student Day protests of 1970 spilled beyond the usual commemoration of the three protestors when a group of students decided to seize and occupy the university's most centrally located buildings, bringing instruction to a complete halt. With classes suspended and so many halls occupied, the whole university had been transformed into an open-air protest and joining was as simple as stepping outside my dorm. I had recently turned eighteen and was teeming with excitement at the prospect of finally breaking free from the small-town tedium of Golpayegan to join in the political life of Tehran University, a center of intellectual and dissident activity in 1960s and 1970s Iran. Even before I had received my notice of admission, I had decided that no matter what, I would be in Tehran come fall. I refused to entertain the possibility of pursuing the other options available to me after high school, which were either to begin compulsory military service at once or leave Iran to study abroad. After years of floating from one small town to another, I had decided early in my adolescence that I would taste the charms of urban life, and there was no better place to do so than Tehran. I had even attempted to put this plan into action earlier by applying to Dar al-Fonun high school, initially founded in 1851 by reformist prime minister Amir Kabir as Iran's first modern college but which, given the growing number of specialized colleges, the education reforms of the 1920s converted to a secondary school.