Iranian President Wants To Purge Secular Teachers
Shaveta Bansal - All Headline News Staff Writer Tehran, Iran (AHN) - In a recap of the 1979 Islamic Revolution, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on Tuesday called upon the students to cleanse the nation's universities of liberal and secular teachers. The hard-line leader complained that the educational system of the country had been badly affected by secularism from the past 50 years. "Today, students should shout at the president and ask why liberal and secular university lecturers are present in the universities," the official Islamic Republic News Agency quoted Ahmadinejad as saying during a meeting with a group of students. The President, who is also the head of the country's Council of Cultural Revolution, has the authority to make such changes. But his comments Tuesday apparently were aimed at encouraging hard-line students to begin a pressure campaign on their own, thus forcing universities to oust such teachers. Ahmadinejad's administration has itself taken several steps in direction of developing an Islamic-oriented country. Earlier this year, Iran retired dozens of liberal university professors and teachers and in November last year, a cleric was appointed to head the country's oldest institution of higher education, Tehran University, despite protests by students. Since taking his office from Mohammad Khatami in August, Ahmadinejad has also replaced several pragmatic veterans in the government with forme |
