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The decline of scientific knowledge in Persia, now Iran, began in the fifteenth century, as the entire Islamic world lost touch with its intellectual roots. In the 1970s, the last Shah dynasty attempted to reverse the trend by building new universities and sending students abroad to do PhDs, after which many returned to teach and research in Iran. The number of scientific publications crept up from 125 in 1970 to nearly 400 in 1979, the year of the Islamic revolution. The revolution halted this modest progress. Many of the scientific élite fled the country as the new regime closed universities and turned against ‘Western science’. The Iran–Iraq war in the 1980s further drained resources, leaving little money for non-military education and research. With peace, more public money became available and Islamic fervour moderated to accept the intrinsic value of science. Universities expanded again, and were allowed to award PhDs. The publication rate also rose, more sharply than in the 1970s: by 2003 the annual output of papers reached close to 2,000. With the election last year of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, a hardline Islamist, every aspect of Iranian life — from its supreme leader, to the judiciary, and parliament — is now in religiously conservative hands. Iran’s reformers have gone underground. Many
areas of science continue to be well funded, including stem-cell
research. Iran was the first Middle East country to develop a human
embryonic stem-cell line, using spare embryos from in vitro fertilization.
And despite increasing restrictions on free speech, higher education
continues to expand. Whether the new university presidents —
all appointed by Ahmadinejad — will yield to conservative
demands for greater controls at universities remains to be seen. |