I’ve found, lately, I don’t have to do my normal perusing of the Internet to get regular updates about Iran in the international arena.

People are talking, but more importantly, people are starting to realize what’s really happening in Iran. I’m not talking about nuclear weapons or economic sanctions — I’m talking about simple, basic human rights issues.


Over the past decades, Iran has systematically denied access to higher education to activists of human, student, and women’s rights, as well as political, religious, and ethnic minorities, and, in general, anyone whose views have differed from those of the government.


Sometimes, people ask me if education is really a human right. I suppose it depends how you determine human rights. But as a standard, article 26 of the United Nations’ Universal Declaration of Human Rights states: “Higher education shall be equally accessible to all on the basis of merit.”


The Baha’i faith, which is the largest religious minority in Iran, is no exception. Along with fellow Iranian activists and faith groups, Baha’i people have been denied this universal right to education.


Working with the conviction that universal education will help bring about the advancement of society, the Baha’i community began an initiative: the Baha’i Institute for Higher Education (BIHE). The BIHE brought people together in each other’s homes to share whatever knowledge they’d collectively accumulated.

Eventually, this endeavour worked well enough that many international universities began accepting this shared knowledge as worthy of accreditation for a university degree.


Carleton and the University of Ottawa were two of the first universities to accept students into graduate programs from the BIHE, and since then have had a flux of Iranian students go through this program.

Many of those students returned to Iran, in the years following their graduation, to teach their friends and other people who had been denied access to higher education. The BIHE made sure to operate transparently, not wanting to incur any more trouble for those who were already forced to live without the ability to pursue knowledge publicly.

This, however, wasn’t enough.


Nooshin Khadem, who received an MBA from Carleton, was an administrator at the BIHE. Canadian Baha’i News Service reported that last May, she was sentenced to four years in prison for providing education to those banned from university in Iran, like many other teachers, administrators and students who had participated in this program.


In response to this, over the past weeks, a campaign has sprung up on campuses across Canada and throughout the world. Carleton witnessed this campaign Nov. 11, as a group of individuals from various backgrounds arose to talk to their peers about the denial of education of many minority groups — religious, ethnic, political, and so on — that has been occurring in Iran.

The team was headed by the Campus Association for Baha’i Studies, a group of like-minded students at Carleton who, although not necessarily all Bahai’s, share an interest in the academic pursuits and values of the Baha’i faith.

They joined forces with other such groups to engage in the “Can You Solve This?” campaign, which has the goal of raising awareness for this situation in Iran and, through a petition, applying international pressure. A similar activity occurred at the University of Ottawa.


Both campaigns were very successful, generating hundreds of letters of hope from students, which were sent to John Baird, Canada’s foreign affairs minister, Irina Bokova, director general of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, Kambiz Sheikh-Hassani, the Islamic Republic of Iran’s chargé d'affaires and head of mission in Ottawa, and Ban Ki-Moon, the secretary general of the United Nations.

As university students, we often take our educational opportunities for granted. We choose what and where we want to study, and whether or not we go to class or do homework. But we often forget there are many places in the world where people don’t have the same educational freedom.

Baha’u’llah, the founder of the Baha’i faith, wrote: "Regard man as a mine rich in gems of inestimable value. Education can, alone, cause it to reveal its treasures, and enable mankind to benefit therefrom."


With the proverbial Arab Spring and what seem to be expectations of an Arab winter, perhaps the situation of minority groups in Iran will change in the near future.