This essay aims to answer two interrelated questions: first, what are the circumstances leading to the adoption of the solar Hijra calendar? And second, how viable it is to view the Persian calendar as a distinct feature of Iran’s national identity, given all the challenges it has encountered over the past four decades? This essay is part of a forthcoming book in Persian, Gahshomari-ye Khorshidi va Hoviyyat-e Irani, which explores the cultural significance of timekeeping in Iran in pre-modern and modern times.

Despite the remarkable quantitative growth, higher education in Iran has failed to achieve autonomy and academic freedom. This article investigates the reasons for this historical failure and the role of governments in violating university autonomy and academic freedom.

The phenomena of the girls of Revolution Street and White Wednesdays in the late nineties, the seeds were sown in women's everyday struggles for the emergence of the women’s movement in a new way, leading up to the Iranian #MeToo movement. This article enumerates the characteristics of the present stage of women’s liberation in Iran and acknowledges the role and effect of those who prepared the women's rights movement to advance in this way. With reference to a two-stage definition moving from the legal movement to the women's freedom movement, this article examines the impact of individual and collective contributions towards the women's freedom movement in Iran.

The oil curse theory emphasizes that the damages that oil has imposed on oil-owning nations are more than its benefits. This study engages the oil curse theory to examine historical planning and organization issues around oil in Iran in a political perspective with a focus on the history of oil revenues in the country.

This article examines the role of civil society organizations in the formation of social movements over the last twenty years in Iran. Civil society can be considered as an area between social, economic, and cultural sub-systems in which the focus is on non-governmental organizations, labor unions, trade unions, and voluntary organizations, such as guilds

This article examines the development of the clergy in the fourteenth SH century. The article examines religious fundamentalism led by Misbah Yazdi, who favored the implementation of Sharia law, as well as Muslim reformers or neo-thinkers who wished to activate the republic and implement modern procedures within the government and the clergy. The article focuses on presenting the perspectives of two mujtahids from outside the government, Mehdi Haeri Yazdi and Seyyed Kamal Heydari, who support the participation of the people in government and their representation in the occultation era.

One of the developments coinciding with the turn of the century in Iran that has shaped the society’s political culture and revolutionary discourse is the shift towards a non-violent method of political struggle, which is clearly seen in the mode of thought and behavior of post-revolutionary generations. This discourse aims at uniting diverse groups of people against the institution of velayat-e faqih through a conceptual appeal to human honor. Historical parallels may be seen in the way that the idea of a House of Justice (Edalat Khaneh) functioned during the Constitutional era as a central and unifying concept across diverse groups. This paper asseses how, at the threshold of a new century, Iran might achieve historical political change through non-violence, especially with reference to excluded and marginalized groups. This prospect is discussed with particular reference to Mohandas Gandhi and Judith Butler and especially engages strategic and philosophical views of non-violence from secular and radical perspectives.

The purpose of this article is to study the "Look to the East" policy of the Islamic Republic in the context of the formation of the new world order around the two axes of liberal democracy and dictatorship. Russia's attempt to regain its past superpower position and China's "New Silk Road" economic project are two columns of the formation of the new world order.

To what extent do Iranians reject the foundational principle of the Islamic regime and support secular politics? This paper contends that in 2020, 70% of Iranian adults supported the separation of religion and politics and 30% otherwise, but no more than 9% strongly favored an Islamic political system. These figures rest on the analysis of data from 2000, 2005, and 2020 surveys carried out in the country, and well-over twenty cross-national and longitudinal surveys in other Middle Eastern countries in the past twenty years – a total of more than 70,000 face-to-face interviews

In spring/summer of 2022, amid backbreaking crises and sanctions, the Islamic Republic pushed a ‘population rejuvenation policy’ with a ‘double-urgent’ legislative priority through Parliament, the Guardian Council, and readied it for quick implementation, despite extensive public opposition to its debatable mechanisms. This article argues that the Islamic Republic is less concerned with the future graying of Iran’s population and more worried about rebuilding its eroding political base.

The coronavirus pandemic has had a regressive impact on women’s economic outcomes worldwide. In Iran, too, the closures and the pandemic have depressed women’s already low economic participation rates by about 20 percent. This paper compares pre-COVID/end of 2019 with the end of 2020 Iranian labor market outcomes, using data from the Statistical Office of Iran.

Article published in the Journal of Freedom of Thought - Iran Academia University Press

Article published in the Journal of Freedom of Thought - Iran Academia University Press

Article published in the Journal of Freedom of Thought - Iran Academia University Press