President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran is cracking down on universities in an effort to crush a student pro-democracy movement and strengthen the hardliners' grip on power.
Leading student activists have been jailed or expelled from their studies, and lecturers have been sacked, while the government has proposed subjecting academics to strict religious testing.
The authorities have also begun a program of burying the bodies of unknown soldiers on campus grounds in what student leaders say is a thinly disguised attempt to bring religious extremists into the universities on the pretext of holding "martyrs' ceremonies."
Students fear that such a presence will be used to violently suppress their activities.
In one recent incident students at Tehran's Sharif University were attacked by plain-clothed Basij (religious volunteers) during an unsuccessful attempt to prevent the burial of three soldiers from the 1980-1988 Iran-Iraq war inside the campus mosque. The incident was overseen by Mehrdad Bazrpash, a close aide to Ahmadinejad and a former Basij leader.
The event took place against a backdrop of speeches by Ahmadinejad, a former university lecturer, stressing the need for "martyrdom" in Iran's confrontation with the West over its nuclear program.
Student leaders say the developments amount to a takeover of universities by Ahmadinejad's ultra-conservative forces. The campuses were hotbeds of pro-democratic protest during the presidency of the former, reformist leader, Mohammad Khatami.
"They want to gain hegemonic control over the universities, which have always been important in influencing the social and political atmosphere and which normally support pro-democracy rather than authoritarian forces," said Abdollah Momeni, an activist appealing against a five-year sentence for leading a student protest.
"Through burying martyrs on campus they open the doors for the entry of armed militias and thus add the universities to their fiefdoms," Momeni said.
Other activists have had their studies terminated after the intervention of the intelligence services. Students say they have been denied permission for low-level political activities that were allowed under Khatami. The purge has extended to university officials.
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