More than 270 Iranian and non-Iranian scholars and civil society activists on Tuesday signed an open letter that denounces the recent arrests and summons of prominent leftist intellectuals in Iran, calling the detentions arbitrary and unlawful.
The signatories expressed deep concern and outrage over the arrests of economist Parviz Sedaghat, sociologist Mahsa Asadollahnejad, writer and translator Shirin Karimi, and the summons of Mohammad Maljoo, an economist long known for his independent analysis of Iran’s political economy.
They described the detained scholars as “leftist thinkers concerned with social justice and opposed to war and foreign domination.”
According to the statement, the academics were arrested on charges of acting against national security, a catch-all accusation often used against dissidents.
The signatories warned that the detentions mark “a new campaign to silence independent voices and reinforce an atmosphere of repression in Iran.”
They drew parallels with past crackdowns on academic freedom — from the 1980 Cultural Revolution, which purged thousands of professors and students, to the suppression of the 1999 student protests, the post-election unrest of 2009, and the mass expulsions of academics following the 2022 Woman, Life, Freedom uprising.
Notable figures among the signatories include Judith Butler, distinguished professor at the University of California, Berkeley; Ervand Abrahamian, historian and professor emeritus at the City University of New York; Ziba Mir-Hosseini, research associate at SOAS, University of London; Ali Mirsepassi and Arang Keshavarzian of New York University; Fatemeh Shams of the University of Pennsylvania; Nayereh Tohidi and Kazem Alamdari of California State University; Kamran Matin of the University of Sussex; Rasmus Elling of the University of Copenhagen; Haideh Moghissi and Jim Vernon of York University; Azadeh Kian of Université Paris Cité; and PEN America’s Writers at Risk director Karin Deutsch Karlekar.
Among the Iranian signatories inside the country are theologian Sedigheh Vasmaghi, political scientist Hatam Ghaderi, sociologist Kazem Kardavani, and filmmaker Reza Haeri.
The arrests have drawn wider condemnation. The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) called for the immediate release of Sedaghat and other detained scholars, while PEN America denounced Iran’s “escalating campaign against freedom of expression.”
Earlier this month, nearly 900 Iranian activists and intellectuals issued a separate statement calling for unity against what they called "the suppression of thought and expression,” describing the crackdown as “a desperate attempt by a failing regime to stifle intellectual vitality.”
