11 May 2006
Ayatollah Ali Khamenei
Supreme Leader of the Islamic Republic of Iran
c/o H.E. Javad Zarif
Ambassador Extraordinary
Permanent Mission of the Islamic Republic of Iran to the United Nations
Fax: 212-867-7086
Your Excellency:
The American Association of University Professors (AAUP) has learned of the arrest and detention of Professor Ramin Jahanbegloo, chair of the Department of Contemporary Studies at Tehran’s Cultural Research Bureau. I write on behalf of my colleagues across the United States to protest this wrong and to urge the Government of Iran to release him immediately.
The AAUP is the oldest professional organization of university and college faculty in the United States. For nearly one hundred years, we have advocated for academic freedom as fundamental to the securing of the common good, which itself depends on the free search for truth and its free exposition. It is our view that the Universal Declaration of Human Rights as well as the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights protects the academic freedom of scholars everywhere to write, teach, and comment without fear of government censorship or punishment.
The AAUP further recognizes that academic freedom is a right of scholars everywhere. For this reason, the AAUP has, among other actions, contested the U.S. government’s denial of a visa to Swiss scholar Tariq Ramadan, the Chinese government’s arbitrary arrest of prominent scholars, and the suppression of academic exchange between American and Cuban universities by the U.S. government.
The arrest of Professor Jahanbegloo offends international standards of academic freedom; and suggests that the government of Iran is intolerant of competing ideas and insensitive to democratic standards. We call upon you to release him from detention without delay.
Sincerely,
Roger W. Bowen
General Secretary