Speaker: Ramin Jahanbegloo, Mahatma Gandhi Centre for Nonviolence and Peace Studies; Vice-Dean of the School of Law at Jindal Global University, Delhi, India Talk: “Understanding Iran Protests”

Talks for Fall 2022: Wednesdays at 10 am (in person at Faculty Club and on ZOOM)

Speaker: Ramin Jahanbegloo, Mahatma Gandhi Centre for Nonviolence and Peace Studies; Vice-Dean of the School of Law at Jindal Global University, Delhi, India
Talk: “Understanding Iran Protests”
Introducer: Bibhu Mohanty

Abstract:

For the first time in its history, the Islamic Republic of Iran is encountering a tough resistance from the Iranian citizens inside and outside the country. Since the beginning of the unrests in Iran, tens of thousands of Iranians living abroad have marched on the streets of Europe, North America, Australia and elsewhere. Most of these protestors belong to a younger generation of Iranians born and raised in Western countries. Also, among these many are highly skilled Iranians, intellectuals, scientists, and artists, who have left their country in the years following the Iranian revolution of 1979. The economic mismanagement and political hardship imposed by the Islamic regime in Iran, accompanied by bribery and corruption, have been the main causes of the massive rift between the political elite and the middle class in Iran. Therefore, forty-three years of theocratic autocracy and human rights abuses have left the Iranian youth in a state of frustration and disenchantment.

Thousands have taken to the streets day and night for the past five weeks despite a crackdown by security forces that has killed nearly 250 people. Hundreds of teenagers, youngsters and university students have been arrested and held in cruel and inhuman conditions. The family of the detainees have no information about the condition and whereabouts of their loved ones and human rights organizations fear that prisoners might be tortured and killed as it has been the case in 2009 in the Kahrizak detention center in Tehran. Many anti-government protestors have also been killed in the past few weeks in the ethic regions of Kurdistan and Baluchistan. As such, having faced a wave of countrywide protests from Iranians of all walks of life, the Iranian regime has decided for a way of brutal clamp-down of demonstrators and dissenters. But this naked violence and barbaric cruelty, which has cost the life of many young girls and boys, has not stopped the hope and excitement of Iranian youngsters for a real change in Iran. It seems as if, despite all the brutalities and killings practised by the governmental forces of repression, people are not willing to give up the streets, the schools, the universities, and the factories. This is a turning point in Iran’s recent political history that the world cannot ignore. It looks the genie of change in Iran is trying once again to get out of the bottle.

As for the Iranian women, their response to the violence of the Iranian regime and the male chauvinistic values of the Iranian society has been to think politics in its feminine nature. Surely, by their creative strategies and their fundamental belief in the feminization process of the Iranian public sphere, Iranian women have become animators of new ideas and the bearers of a moral capital. What the Iranian women and especially the younger generation of schoolgirls are teaching the Iranian political establishment is that if it continues to underestimate the revolution of values that are taking place in today’s Iran, it is just continuing at its own risk with its own dream of domination.

This is a frustrated, humiliated, discriminated, and repressed generation which sees no social, political, or cultural future for itself in the Islamic Republic of Iran.  But this is a generation which despite the absence of a clear horizon in its everyday life has thrown off the yoke of immaturity that was imposed on her. Unlike their parents and their grandparents who lived with the bitter taste of political defeat against the theocratic nomenclature, the women of the generation of Nika and Sarina learned to be cheerful, lively, and imaginative. As a result, they dared to think and act differently, while inaugurating a revolution of values in the Iranian society. This revolution of values has been the outcome of a parallel life and a virtual freedom that these young women found on the social media.

Bio: Ramin Jahanbegloo is an Iranian-Canadian political philosopher, presently the Executive Director of the Mahatma Gandhi Centre for Nonviolence and Peace Studies and the Vice-Dean of the School of Law at Jindal Global University- Delhi-India. He received his B.A. and M.A. in Philosophy, History and Political Science and later his Ph.D. in Philosophy from the Sorbonne University. In 1993 he taught at the Academy of Philosophy in Tehran. He has been a researcher at the French Institute for Iranian Studies and a fellow at the Center for Middle Eastern Studies at Harvard University. Ramin Jahanbegloo taught in the Department of Political Science at the University of Toronto from 1997-2001. He later served as the head of the Department of Contemporary Studies of the Cultural Research Centre in Tehran and, in 2006-07, was Rajni Kothari Professor of Democracy at the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies in New Delhi, India. In April 2006 Dr. Jahanbegloo was arrested in Tehran Airport charged with preparing a velvet revolution in Iran. He was placed in solitary confinement for four months and released on bail. He was an Associated Professor of Political Science and a Research Fellow in the Centre for Ethics at University of Toronto from 2008-2012 and an Associate Professor of Political Science at York University in Toronto from 2012 – 2015. He is also a member of the advisory board of PEN Canada. He is the winner of the Peace Prize from the United Nations Association in Spain (2009) for his extensive academic works in promoting dialogue between cultures and his advocacy for non-violence and more recently the winner of the Josep Palau i Fabre International Essay Prize. Ramin Jahanbegloo is also the founder of a peace movement called Students for Peace, which has active members in India, Canada and Colombia. He is the author of 32 books in English, French, Spanish, Italian, and Persian.

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