Zahra Mousavi, Daughter of Mir Hossein Mousavi and Zahra Rahnavard, Expelled from University

Zahra Mousavi, daughter of Mir Hossein Mousavi and Zahra Rahnavard, who worked as a faculty member at Al-Zahra University in Tehran, was expelled from her position due to the intervention of security agencies. On Wednesday, July 20, she wrote in a note on Instagram: "In the midst of the recent election turmoil, on June 26, I was definitively expelled from the university for the second time. In both instances, security agencies played a key role." According to Zahra Mousavi Khameneh, she was first suspended at the beginning of her parents' house arrest due to "reporting on those injustices," and her salary was cut. Mir Hossein Mousavi and Zahra Rahnavard, leaders opposing the disputed 2009 election results, have been under house arrest since winter 2010. Zahra Mousavi, with 16 years of teaching experience at Sooreh, Art, and Al-Zahra universities, briefly described the job discrimination against her alongside the pressure from intelligence agencies for her to be "redeemed or permanently contracted." This university professor described the process as "erosive" and "oppressive," stating that about two years after requesting a change in her employment status, she received her expulsion letter just days ago. She mentioned that the Ministry of Intelligence during the previous three administrations, led by Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Hassan Rouhani, and Ebrahim Raisi, was the main obstacle in her case. Based on a copy of the ruling from the disciplinary committee regarding faculty members from April of this year, published on Zahra Mousavi's Instagram page, her support for students led to a complaint from Al-Zahra University's security and a written warning to her. Zahra Mousavi referred to her expulsion as another "documented example" of "the scars, prisons, poverty, injustice, and other calamities of the past 15 years," adding, "In this context, I was once accused of supporting university protests." This art professor called her companionship with new generations a "treasure and unparalleled opportunity" and emphasized, "The future is truly bright." Members of seven scientific associations in the country issued a statement on September 10 of last year warning about "widespread expulsions of professors and security confrontations with students," stating that the gradual and currently accelerating "dissolution" of the scientific institution exacerbates the current disastrous inefficiency of the governing system. The pressures and interventions of Iran's security agencies in universities, as well as confrontations with protesting professors and students, have intensified since September 2022, following widespread protests over the death of Mahsa Amini in the custody of the Islamic Republic's "morality police." A video of Hassan Bagherinia, an expelled professor before his arrest in Mashhad, and a statistical report from Amir Kabir's newsletter on the suppression of students indicated that over seventy thousand students participated in the nationwide protests. A union official spoke of "government interventions in universities"; the Ministry of Interior instructs universities. The president of Tehran University of Medical Sciences denied the expulsion of professors; "We had no 'expelled' professors."