page_title: Student activism
section_title: Iran
hierarchical_section_title: Student activism / By country / Iran
caption_attribution_description: فارسی: همراهی دانشجویان دانشگاه شریف با راه‌پیمایان معترض به تخلف در انتخابات ریاست جمهوری ۱۳۸۸ در خیابان آزادی
context_page_description: Student activism or campus activism is work by students to cause political, environmental, economic, or social change. Although often focused on schools, curriculum, and educational funding, student groups have influenced greater political events.
  Modern student activist movements vary widely in subject, size, and success, with all kinds of students in all kinds of educational settings participating, including public and private school students; elementary, middle, senior, undergraduate, and graduate students; and all races, socio-economic backgrounds, and political perspectives. Some student protests focus on the internal affairs of a specific institution; others focus on broader issues such as a war or dictatorship. Likewise, some student protests focus on an institution's impact on the world, such as a disinvestment campaign, while others may focus on a regional or national policy's impact on the institution, such as a campaign against government education policy.
context_section_description: In Iran, students have been at the forefront of protests both against the pre-1979 secular monarchy and, in recent years, against the theocratic islamic republic. Both religious and more moderate students played a major part in Ruhollah Khomeini's opposition network against the Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi. In January 1978 the army dispersed demonstrating students and religious leaders, killing several students and sparking a series of widespread protests that ultimately led to the Iranian Revolution the following year. On November 4, 1979, militant Iranian students calling themselves the Muslim Students Following the Line of the Imam seized the US embassy in Tehran holding 52 embassy employees hostage for a 444 days (see Iran hostage crisis).
  Recent years have seen several incidents when liberal students have clashed with the Iranian government, most notably the Iranian student riots of July 1999. Several people were killed in a week of violent confrontations that started with a police raid on a university dormitory, a response to demonstrations by a group of students of Tehran University against the closure of a reformist newspaper. Akbar Mohammadi was given a death sentence, later reduced to 15 years in prison, for his role in the protests. In 2006, he died at Evin prison after a hunger strike protesting the refusal to allow him to seek medical treatment for injuries suffered as a result of torture.
  At the end of 2002, students held mass demonstrations protesting the death sentence of reformist lecturer Hashem Aghajari for alleged blasphemy. In June 2003, several thousand students took to the streets of Tehran in anti-government protests sparked by government plans to privatise some universities.
  In the May 2005 Iranian presidential election, Iran's largest student organization, The Office to Consolidate Unity, advocated a voting boycott. After the election of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, student protests against the government has continued. In May 2006, up to 40 police officers were injured in clashes with demonstrating students in Tehran. At the same time, the Iranian government has called for student action in line with its own political agenda. In 2006, President Ahmadinejad urged students to organize campaigns to demand that liberal and secular university teachers be removed.
  In 2009, after the disputed presidential election, a series of student protests broke out, which became known as the Iranian Green Movement. The violent measures used by the Iranian government to suppress these protests have been the subject of widespread international condemnation. As a consequence of hash repression, "the student movement entered a period of silence during Ahmadinejad's second term (2009–2013)".
  During the first term of Hassan Rouhani in office (2013-2017) several groups endeavored to revive the student movement through rebuilding student organizations.
caption: Sharif University of Technology students protest over the 2009 presidential election.
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