Last week, members of Columbia faculty turned to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton for support in gaining Kian Tajbakhsh’s release from Iranian prison.
Tajbakhsh, who earned his Ph.D. from Columbia, was supposed to teach at Columbia’s Graduate School of Architecture, Planning, and Preservation this year, but he was arrested last summer in Iran during the aftermath of the elections. He faces multiple charges of spying and being a threat to the national government.
When arrested, he was accused of being a threat to national security for working with George Soros’ Open Society Institute—an organization Iran named a CIA operative—and being on the e-mail list of Gary Sick, a senior research scholar at Columbia’s Middle East Institute whom Iran also connects with the CIA. Sick has denied this charge.
In September, both the University and the White House called for his release. An open letter that was circulated among Columbia faculty gathered over 150 signatures, and on Jan. 11, a group of faculty sent a letter to Clinton, urging her to help obtain Tajbakhsh’s immediate release.
According to Tanya Domi—an adjunct professor for SIPA who teaches human rights and signed the letter—this letter has been “received by a key staff member to Secretary Clinton, with thanks to our faculty.”
Signers include Dean John Coatsworth of the School of International and Public Affairs; Dean Nicholas Lemann of the Journalism School; Peter Awn, dean of the School of General Studies and director of SIPA’s Middle East Institute; Elazar Barkan, director of the Center for the Study of Human Rights; and Gary Sick.
The letter asks Clinton to “do everything possible to obtain Mr. Tajbakhsh’s immediate release.”
“We [the signers] hope the letter may lead to him being treated better in prison,” said political science professor and department chair Andrew Nathan, who signed the letter.
“We hope she will use an appropriate channel to express concern,” Nathan said, adding that the State Department has “a lot of communications with the Iranian government” and that it is “better to have attention to the case than to have it ignored.” The letter also denounces Iran’s “pattern of harassment of scholars,” including Mohammad Maleki, the former chancellor of Tehran University.
“Attacking and imprisoning scholars is a destructive and pernicious act that does not address the problems confronting the Islamic Republic of Iran, now or in the future,” it states.
“Everybody knows that the regime is using coercive repression on its critics inside of the country,” Nathan said. “This person [Tajbakhsh] is a scholar, who is coming to this university as a scholar and a teacher. He is not a politician. He hasn’t used violence. He is not a terrorist. He is using academic freedom, which should be protected."
“By highlighting the case of our colleague Kian Tajbakhsh, we wish to bring attention to the larger issue of civil rights abuses that are endemic to the Islamic Republic,” said Iranian Studies professor Hamid Dabashi, who also signed the letter. “We want to keep the case of Kian Tajbakhsh at the forefront of global attention so that political considerations or the geopolitics of the region are not allowed to override the more pressing human rights abuses.”
Ira Katznelson, another signer and the Ruggles Professor of Political Science and History, chaired Tajbakhsh’s thesis committee during his time at Columbia. According to Katznelson, Tajbakhsh and him had kept in touch after Tajbakhsh left to teach at the New School, where Katznelson used to work, and after he left for Iran.
“He is a first-rate scholar, thoughtful and fair-minded, who will make an excellent addition to the faculty in Urban Planning at Columbia,” Katznelson said.
He added: “It is hard to know how any particular intervention will affect the prospects for his release, but it is important that his situation remain both in the public eye and a source of private diplomatic pressure.”
amber.tunnell@columbiaspectator.com
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