Ahmadinejad calls for purge of liberal university teachers

Описание: (5 Sep 2006)
1. Wide shot of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad walking into room
2. Cutaway cameramen
3. Close up of Ahmadinejad at meeting
4. Wide shot of meeting
5. Cutaway cameraman
6. Wide shot of meeting
7. SOUNDBITE (Farsi): Ajili, student:
"Many of our university professors in humanitarian sciences courses admit to be secular and to be unfaithful to religious principles and the Islamic Republic of Iran. They have resided in universities' scientific boards as if it's their sweet home."
8. Cutaway of audience
9. Ahmadinejad on podium
10. SOUNDBITE (Farsi): Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Iranian president:
"Today, students should shout at the president and ask why liberal and secular university lecturers are present in the universities."
11. Cutaway
12. SOUNDBITE (Farsi) Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Iranian president:
"Our educational system has been under the influence of secular thoughts for 150 years. The cornerstone of the world hegemony is ridiculing cultures and eliminating self-dependence within nations and imposing its favourite ideals on them."
13. Ahmadinejad leaving the lectern
STORYLINE
Iran's hard-line President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad called on Tuesday for a purge of liberal and secular teachers from the country's universities, urging students to lead the step back to 1980s-style radicalism.
"Today, students should shout at the president and ask why liberal and secular university lecturers are present in the universities, Ahmadinejad said during a meeting with a group of students.
Ahmadinejad complained that changes in the country's universities were difficult to accomplish and that the country's educational system had been affected by secularism for the last 150 years.
The president, in his role as head of the country's Council of Cultural Revolution, does have the authority to make such changes.
But his comments on Tuesday seemed designed to encourage hard-line students to begin a pressure campaign on their own.
That would presumably help his efforts by placing more pressure on universities to take such moves.
"Many of our university professors in humanitarian sciences courses admit to be secular and to be unfaithful to religious principles and the Islamic Republic of Iran," said one student speaking during the meeting.
Ahmadinejad's aim appears to be to install a new generation of rulers who will revive the fundamentalist goals pursued in the 1980s under the late Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, father of the 1979 Islamic revolution in Iran.
In the early 1980s, shortly after the revolution, Iran sacked hundreds of liberal and leftist university teachers and students.

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