As Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad addressed a mass rally in Isfahan last month, we sat in an academic office in Tehran. Across the table were senior officials from the country’s most conservative intellectual center.
In Isfahan, Ahmadinejad preached defiance of Western “enemies.” Days before, his government had detained several Iranian American intellectuals, including Haleh Esfandiari, on false charges of “crimes against national security.”
Meanwhile, in Tehran, the deputy provost of Imam Sadiq University - the religion-infused training ground for Iran’s political elite - gestured toward a legal document, asking us to sign. The document was hardly a coerced confession. Our host wished to establish an academic exchange with our Philadelphia-based law school. Yes, even the most conservative Iranian academics still seek serious engagement with American counterparts.
Some commentators, including The Inquirer’s Trudy Rubin, believe Esfandiari’s arrest is part of an attempt by Iranian radicals to limit contact with the West. Ahmadinejad does want to prevent such contact. In fact, one colleague’s visa was denied before our trip. Although the U.S. State Department has made millions of dollars available to support Iranian liberals, even mentioning - much less accepting - such funds is a sure way to Evin Prison. For Iranians, association with western NGOs leads to a visit from the security services.
Yet, academic exchange remains possible. The same day Rubin’s column, decrying Esfandiari’s detention, appeared in Philadelphia, we participated in an intellectually serious conference on the relationship between human rights and religion at Mofid University in Qom, Iran. We were invited to give a series of lectures to graduate students on the practical implementation of international human rights and the need for governmental checks and balances. We did not ignore Esfandiari’s arrest but, rather, raised the issue with various Iranians.
Any taint of U.S. governmental influence will kill academic diplomacy. Yet, when independently initiated by a university and undertaken on the basis of exchange between intellectual peers, it may be the only way to engage Iran today.
Admittedly, academic contact will not address many of the chilling threats Iran presents. Iran holds the cards to what might be the last chance for stability in Iraq. It is mastering nuclear technology. The morality police routinely beat women whose veils reveal too much. Intellectuals with Western ties are being detained. Yet, academic diplomacy offers hope for long-term engagement with Iran when conducted as a second track, independent from - yet parallel to - urgently needed governmental efforts.
Some American scholars are calling for a boycott of academic exchange until detainees are released. Such a boycott would undermine what little influence we have in Iran and would play into Ahmadinejad’s hands.
Iranian radicals would like nothing more than to close the window through which foreign academics engage Iran. They see the long-term threat it poses. Yet, perhaps due to Iran’s long intellectual history, they have been unable to shut it completely. For U.S. universities to close that window would only punish the Iranian students most likely to lead change.
The best prospect for improving Iran’s human rights and our security lies with the young people who will eventually inherit power. We have a critical opportunity to influence them today. Penn Law and other schools offer scholarships to young Iranians to study here. More, rather than less, contact will help young Iranians acquire the skills to lead their country back to meaningful democracy. Depriving them of such opportunities undercuts the very principles to which Esfandiari has devoted her career.
Among the greatest successes of U.S. diplomacy were the intellectual exchanges with the Soviet bloc during the Cold War, such as Kissinger’s Harvard International Seminar. We need this kind of human-to-human contact with Iran. If we do not do so, our potential rivals will. Many students we met with in Tehran were on their way to China for an all-expenses-paid exchange, courtesy of Beijing.
At a moment when government-to-government relations seem stalemated and cross-border civil-society ties are weighted by the specter of arrest, academic diplomacy offers a rare chance for engagement and influence. As long as the window for such exchange remains open even a crack, U.S. universities should seize the opportunity.
William Burke-White is assistant professor of law at the University of Pennsylvania and is a principal of the Truman National Security Project
Adam Kolker is assistant dean for Graduate and International Programs at the University of Pennsylvania Law School
