The Baha'i Faith Index

Iran Jails Bahá’í Educators, Calling Their Canadian Degrees Illegal

Friday, 24 February 2012 16:22

This article first appeared in the February 2012 edition of the CAUT Bulletin, which is widely circulated and read by professors across Canada. The lead to the article was mentioned on the front page of the publication and the article had excellent placement on page two. The bulletin is published by the Canadian Association of University Teachers (CAUT). CAUT has more than 66,000 members from the academic community.

The seven imprisoned Baha'i educators are (top row, left to right): Mahmoud Badavam, Ramin Zibaie, Riaz Sobhani, Farhad Sedghi; (bottom row, left to right) Noushin Khadem, Kamran Mortezaie, and Vahid Mahmoudi. © BWNSOttawa, Ontario, 24 February 2012 (CBNS)— For more than a decade Canadian universities and professors have played a quiet but essential role in providing graduate education to Bahá’í students banned from university in Iran because of their religion. Now, the Iranian government is declaring their Canadian degrees “illegal.” They are also imprisoning Bahá’í faculty and staff involved with a community initiative known as the Bahá’í Institute for Higher Education (BIHE), set up in 1987 after the Iranian government fired all Bahá’í professors and expelled Bahá’í students from post-secondary institutions.

In 1998 Carleton University began accepting Iranian Bahá’í graduate students who had completed the equivalent of an undergraduate degree at BIHE. Based on the exceptional academic performance of the first few BIHE students other Canadian universities admitted BIHE graduates to pursue Master’s and PhD degrees. These include the University of British Columbia, Simon Fraser University, the University of Manitoba, Queen’s University, the University of Ottawa, McGill University and Concordia University.

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