An Iranian human rights scholar scheduled to teach at Penn Law as a visiting professor is reportedly being detained by the Iranian government without charges or explanation.
The scholar, Medhi Zakerian, was arrested in mid-August as he waited for U.S. visa clearance, said Penn Law professor and international law expert William Burke-White.
Zakerian has been held in prison for three weeks "without charges or contact with the outside world," added Burke-White, who was instrumental in bringing his long-time colleague and friend to Philadelphia.
He said he learned of the detention from one of three Iranian students at Penn Law, who read about it an online Iranian publication that monitors human rights violations. Subsequent information has come from Iranian press reports, he added.
In a statement issued by Penn Law, Dean Michael Fitts said "[Zakerian's] scholarship is at the forefront of international and human rights law and we remain hopeful that we can welcome Professor Zakerian to our classrooms."
Non-governmental organizations Human Rights Watch and International League for Human Rights joined Penn Law in calling for the scholar's release.
Burke-White said that in the past the Iranian government has released detainees "after some period of time" and advocates are "working through a variety of channels to ensure [Zakerian's] release."
Because of the delicacy of the situation, he said he could not give more details about future courses of action.
ILHR president Bob Arsenault said the situation is particularly troubling because Zakerian, a prominent human rights defender, was likely detained to deter other activists from speaking out.
"It may be Penn's eminence and commitment to honest scholarship that frightened the Iranian government into taking such action," Arsenault said.
Wharton junior Brianne Blakey, president of the Penn chapter of Amnesty International, said "prisoners of conscience" - people detained for expressing beliefs - are often targets of nations with strict censorship laws because such governments "depend on keeping a certain state of mind to maintain their power."
Burke-White agreed that "it is not uncommon for the Iranian government to remove people with whom they disagree or feel threatened by from their jobs or, in extreme situations, detain them."
Zakerian taught at the state-run University of Tehran until about a year ago, when a government "crackdown on liberal-minded academics" removed him from his post, Burke-White said. He then joined the independent Islamic Azad University.
Around that time, Burke-White and Zakerian began exploring how to bring the scholar to campus, an idea administrators embraced.
Arsenault said ILHR plans to coordinate with other human rights organizations to advocate for his release through a joint letter or protest.
