on campus activists. Iran Focus
Students at the University of Tehran refused to attend classes in the morning and gathered outside the campus library to demonstrate against the appointment of a cleric as the new chief of the university. Ayatollah Amid Zanjani, a notorious religious prosecutor in the 1980s, was installed on Sunday as the new university chancellor. His predecessor, an academic, expressed surprise at the unprecedented haste over the transition.
The students chanted, Appointed head, resign now! and Even if we students die, we will not accept humiliation.
As protests got heated several students pushed the ayatollah and threw his turban off his head.
Irans Education Minister Mohammad-Mehdi Zahedi told state television that Zanjanis appointment was carried out in the framework of the law and under the provisions he had as minister.
Meanwhile, in Amir Kabir University, some 2,000 students rallied against the recent increased government security protocols being run on campus.
Several students who took over the university podium and addressed fellow demonstrators blamed the government for tightening their controls on student actions, and said that on campus security offices had been set up.
Demonstrators also called for an end to indiscriminately suspensions being issued to vocal anti-government students.
Separately, a protest was held by students outside the Economics Department of Allameh Tabatabai University, but was quickly forced back by State Security Forces who prevented demonstrators to move into the main university gates.
There were chants of They dont let students into the university by protestors.
