Academics Around World Urge More Support For Iran Protests

More than 2,300 academics from US universities have urged President Joe Biden to do more to support the antigovernment protesters across Iran. 

In a letter sent to the president Tuesday, the academics, including more than 425 Iranian-American professors, called for “urgent attention to a dire situation in Iranian universities,” asking Biden to take “further tangible actions.” 

They urged US president Joe Biden to “halt any and all negotiations with the Iranian regime, and prevent any sanctions relief under any pretext, directly or indirectly, until all violators of human rights in Iran are held accountable.”

The letter, signed by 10 Nobel laureates as well as many members of the Iranian diaspora, said that “An attack on the freedom of one university community is an attack on the freedom of all.”

Noting that demonstrations in more than 170 Iranian cities, including in over 100 universities, have been violently suppressed by the regime’s security forces since the outbreak of the uprising in Iran, they said that the repression is becoming harsher every day, and hundreds have been killed and thousands arrested so far. 

“We also ask you to recognize the universally accepted right of the Iranian people to self-defense as they seek to attain sovereignty and self-determination,” they concluded. 

In another similar measure, over 500 scholars launched a petition to demand the release of all activists, including students, from the prisons of the Islamic Republic, calling on the international scientific community to amplify the voices of those in Iran, scientific journal Nature reported.