Dismissal of 32,000 Adjunct Professors from Azad University; 20,000 Doctoral Students Replaced Them

A Tehran-based newspaper reported on Thursday, October 12, that thousands of professors have been dismissed from Azad University in the new academic year, with "first or second semester doctoral students" replacing them. According to the Etemad newspaper, since the beginning of October this year, "32,000 adjunct professors" across various fields and branches of Azad Islamic University have been "removed," and in their place, "20,000 first or second semester doctoral students" from the same university have been employed in associate and bachelor's degree programs after registering for a 40-hour "teaching" training course. University officials are using the term "status change" to describe these dismissals in order to reduce the "semantic burden of removal." This replacement was decided by Mehdi Tehranchi, the president of Azad University, and the incentive for doctoral students who have taken on teaching positions is "paying lower tuition fees." The dismissal of 32,000 university professors, which occurred "without any prior notification," has left many of them stating that they have "no new job opportunities" as they have surpassed the age limit for hiring in university faculty or government institutions after one or two decades of teaching at Azad University, thus losing their only source of income. Azad University reportedly had "22,000 faculty members and 32,000 adjunct professors." Mehdi Tehranchi had announced in mid-April this year that "saying goodbye to the concept of adjunct teaching" and using "doctoral students as teaching assistants" instead is part of his plans. The dismissal of "hundreds of professors" with "critical thoughts and perspectives" also occurred at the Science and Research branch of Azad University in 2017, and the widespread protests that followed their dismissal indicated that Farhad Rahbar, the then-president of the university, who was dismissed the following year, aimed to replace them with "2,800 quota graduates." The Etemad newspaper emphasized that the "greatest concern of this group of 32,000 is their professional and employment rights," including "defective insurances, unpaid fees from the beginning of last year for three or four semesters, and the disregard for the dignity and respect of professors with this sudden removal." The dismissal of professors critical of the government and supportive of nationwide protests in Iranian universities has intensified in recent months, but Islamic Republic officials refer to this action as "termination of cooperation." Following the dismissal of several university professors in Iran, dozens of academic figures outside the country expressed solidarity with the Iranian academic community, emphasizing that "we are witnessing a new wave of pressures, threats, various administrative punishments, dismissals, and forced early retirements of professors" who are considered "critical, dissatisfied, and independent by the Islamic Republic." They stated that the Islamic Republic "has never recognized the independence of universities and the academic freedom of professors and students since 1979, and the numerous interventions of political, religious, and security institutions have made conventional university life impossible in Iran, with the fields of humanities and social sciences suffering more than other scientific areas due to these ideological and security pressures."