Iranian college students face pressure as authorities crack down on
dissent
[November 05, 2026]
By AMIR-HUSSEIN RADJY
CAIRO (AP) — After participating in an anti-government protest on
campus, the social sciences student was called into a disciplinary
hearing at his university and faced an intimidating panel: It included a
cleric representing Iran’s supreme leader and an official who refused to
identify himself.
The questioning they gave him underscored Iranian officials' seriousness
in rooting out dissenters at universities after crushing massive
demonstrations in January and after the eruption of war with the United
States.
The cleric and the official asked: When former Supreme Leader Ali
Khamenei was killed in airstrikes at the beginning of the war on Feb.
28, “what did you feel?”
Scores of university students around Iran are facing similar hearings
for joining protests, according to Iranian student unions and outside
rights monitors. It’s another side of authorities’ campaign to silence
dissent as the war and a monthslong U.S. naval blockade worsen Iran’s
economic crisis. With Iranian leaders and U.S. President Donald Trump
both threatening a possible return to escalated fighting, many students
fear the heat on them will only increase.
The Associated Press spoke by phone and messaging apps with half a dozen
student protesters in Iran facing disciplinary procedures, all of whom
spoke on condition of anonymity out of fear of retribution.
Students brought before panels face potential expulsion or even a ban
from further study at any university. The repercussions can extend
beyond campus walls. Some have been fired from their jobs or have faced
death threats or other harassment when details of their cases become
public.
“It puts an extraordinary psychological pressure on people. I mean for
me, it’s unspeakable,” said the social sciences student.
Authorities view campus activism as a threat
The disciplinary measures followed college protests that sprouted up
parallel to the wave of demonstrations that began in late December,
triggered by a currency crash. Those demonstrations quickly grew into
the largest nationwide protests since the 1979 Iranian revolution.
Security forces crushed them by opening fire, killing thousands and
arresting thousands of others.
Even after that, smaller campus protests persisted, up to the eve of the
Feb. 28 U.S.-Israeli attack on Iran that triggered the war.
In February, Gholamhossein Mohseni Ejei, Iran’s hard-line judiciary
chief, said judicial authorities would get involved in prosecuting
crimes on campuses if educational authorities were unable to control
them.
The weeks of heavy U.S. and Israeli bombardment of Iran put university
measures against students on hold. But since the summer, students began
being called into hearings.
As universities reopened last month, a top cleric warned that campus
dissent was a threat to Iran’s rulers that must be ended.
“The enemy wants to start internal pressure from the university
environment and follow it throughout the country,” said Ahmad Alamolhoda,
who is the Friday prayer leader in the eastern shrine city of Mashhad
and the supreme leader’s representative in the province.
He called on universities to “track down any offending element in the
university and prepare the ground for dealing with them.”
Iranian authorities are still arresting and prosecuting protesters tied
to the January protests, with some facing the death penalty.
At panels, students face pressure to recant
The number of expulsions and suspensions remains unclear. But the
“severity of action” has risen compared with past crackdowns, explained
Ali Taghipour, an exiled Iranian activist who tracks student protests.
The process can take several months, with several levels of hearings
before the ministry overseeing universities signs off on any
punishments.
Shargh, a reformist newspaper, reported last month a growing tally of
expulsions at half a dozen universities in the capital. At least 10
students have been expelled at the University of Tehran, another 10 at
Amir Kabir University, and others have been handed suspensions. AP has
been unable to independently verify these particular cases.
The procedures appear geared toward intimidating students into silence.
The social sciences student and another student both said administrators
forced them to write out their defenses even before being told the
charges against them — leaving them guessing about what to put down.
The social sciences student’s charges included participating in an
“illegal gathering.” His personal contact details were also published on
pro-government social media channels, and he now fears being attacked by
government supporters.
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Pictures of the late Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei
hang in front of the Iran University of Science and Technology in
Tehran, Iran, March 31, 2026. (AP Photo/Vahid Salemi, File)
Students describe pressure from university officials to recant
anti-government stances in order to avoid punishment.
“The main emphasis in all the universities is that students admit
they’ve done something wrong, and they’ve used all their efforts to make
it into a psychological war,” said a humanities student in Tehran who
has also faced disciplinary action.
He shared screenshots with the AP of phone messages calling him a
“traitor” and threatening violence against him and his family. The
messages came after pro-government social media channels published his
identity and contact information.
Members of the feared Basij sit on some panels
At Sharif University, one of Iran’s most elite schools, administrators
have reviewed action against some 250 students, its student union
president Farzad Rahmani told the reformist media outlet Ensaf.
At least 40 of those students have faced hearings so far, and 10 have
been expelled, he said.
Disciplinary hearings usually involve university administrators, faculty
members, a representative of the supreme leader and the campus security
agency, known as Harasat, which operates under the Intelligence Ministry
and monitors political loyalty to Iran’s theocracy.
Members of the feared Basij volunteer militia, which maintains a
presence on university campuses, also often participate.
“The role of the Basij and the Harasat is very strong,” Taghipour said,
explaining that they typically identify suspect students and gather
cases against them.
Some students have remained defiant despite growing pressures. A student
union at one Tehran university said last week that administrators and
campus Basij had threatened students who staged a gathering.
“Threatening a student with expulsion or suspension — solely for
participating in a gathering or protesting against issued rulings — is
not a sign of strength, but rather a sign of fear regarding the
resurgence of student protests,” said a statement on the union's
Telegram channel.
Students say the war is making the pressure worse
Iran’s college students have frequently propelled anti-government
protests. Campus unrest played a key role in sustaining protests against
the mandatory headscarf in 2022-23 that also turned into calls for the
theocracy’s overthrow.
Hundreds of students were expelled or suspended over those protests,
though some were later allowed to resume studies by President Masoud
Pezeshkian’s government.
Since then, authorities severely curtailed campus associations, seeing
them as a source of unrest, a graduate student and media worker said.
The 2022 protests forced authorities to relax headscarf enforcement, but
hard-liners have been calling for a renewed clampdown. The University of
Tehran said it will refer female students who persist in violating
headscarf rules to disciplinary hearings, its president told a
semiofficial student news agency, ISNA, on Oct. 19.
An undergraduate student in his early 20s in Tehran said campus security
was stopping his female classmates more often over their dress, “putting
them under pressure.”
Widespread disciplinary action by universities leaves students afraid
that anyone could be expelled, he said. They're even more afraid they
could be arrested, he added.
One Sharif University student was arrested from his home in April, the
day he was scheduled to attend a disciplinary hearing, its student union
reported this week.
Students who spoke with the AP described rising fears all-out war could
erupt again.
“This war has made it easier for them to crack down, to securitize
everything,” the undergraduate student said.
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