An Unfinished Odyssey: The Iranian Student Movement’s Struggles for Social Justice

Abstract

This chapter begins with a brief history of the Iranian Student Movement (SM) before the 1979 Revolution, highlighting the centrality of social justice in student activism during this period. The second part examines how social justice agenda gradually became marginalized in the postrevolution SM as a result of three main factors: the Cultural Revolution, the Iran–Iraq War, and the triumph of neoliberalism over Iranian higher education system. The third part discusses the rise and fall of a new wave of student struggles for social justice which manifested in a radical leftist student movement in the 2000s. The chapter concludes with proposing a set of recommendations that might help a future social justice-driven student movement advancing its agenda more effectively than its predecessors.

An earlier version of some sections of this chapter first appeared in my master’s thesis at Columbia University. I am indebted to my thesis advisors, Professors Hamid Dabashi and Lawrence G. Potter, for their invaluable comments and insights. I am also grateful to Professor Peyman Vahabzadeh for his constructive comments and suggestions on this chapter.