Iranian Universities receive clampdown

In a speech given yesterday to Iranian students, Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad called for a purge of "liberal and secular" academics from Iranian universities.

Ahmadinejad derided secular lecturers as "a fifth column of western colonialism," which he said was seeking to expand into Iran.  Ahmadinejad is now seen to be reviving campaigns of the 1980s, when hundreds of liberal university teachers and students were expelled from universities.

In recent months, several student activists have been imprisoned and dozens of liberal lecturers forced to retire before the statutory age. Last year, Ahmadinejad appointed a radical cleric as chancellor of Tehran University, the country's most prestigious institution. The government has also buried "martyrs" from the 1988 Iran-Iraq war in some universities in what activists see as an excuse to allow security forces on to campuses to keep watch on the student body.