Former Iranian President Mohammad Khatami will be speaking at Harvard’s Kennedy School on Sunday, September 10. The timing of the talk is particularly embarrassing: Iran has recently accelerated its purge of liberal and secular elements from its universities, as recently discussed here. To make matters worse, the topic of Khatami’s address is the “Ethics of Tolerance in the Age of Violence.” The title reads like a parody of Iranian policy.
The situation in Iran is dire:
“Earlier this year, Iran retired dozens of liberal university professors and teachers. And last November, Ahmadinejad’s administration for the first time named a cleric to head the country’s oldest university in Tehran amid protests by students over the appointment.”
It is sorry that Harvard would give a platform to a representative of a dictatorial regime currently crushing its own academic world. That this takes place the day before the fifth anniversary of the September 11 attacks testifies to a particular callousness.
