Officials in academia at Penn and beyond have decided to take a stand in light of last month's detention of Iranian scholar Mehdi Zakerian, who was scheduled to teach at Penn Law this year.
Penn President Amy Gutmann recently sent a letter directly to the president of Iran expressing her concerns on behalf of the academic community and urging the Iranian government to release Zakerian.
Zakerian, an assistant professor of human rights at an independent university in Tehran, was detained in Tehran by the Iranian government in mid-August with no explanation.
Gutmann also signed a joint letter to the Iranian government with Anne Marie Slaughter, the dean of the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University. That letter also advocated for Zakerian's release.
And several human rights groups - including Human Rights Watch and International League for Human Rights - as well as Law School faculty have also been active in trying to bring Zakerian to Penn.
"We have done as much as we can reasonably do," said Gutmann. "All I can say is that I certainly hope and expect he will be [released]."
However, she added that she has no information on the scholar's location or his condition, "which is distressing."
At the time of his detention, Zakerian was waiting for U.S. visa clearance in order to travel to Philadelphia to teach at Penn.
Law professor William Burke-White said "the Iranian government has not made clear why he was detained," but Zakerian may have "overstepped the invisible line of what is acceptable for an academic to write about."
Burke-White said the situation is "certainly not the only case" of unexplained detention that the academic world has seen over the past few years.
He explained that the Iranian government began a fervent effort to "crack down on academic efforts" in 2007, citing the 2007 incarceration of Haleh Esfandiari, a scholar and dual citizen of Iran and the United States.
Esfandiari was held in an Iranian prison for 105 days.
However, Burke-White said he remains hopeful that Zakerian will be released.
He added that efforts to secure the release of detained academics "have proved fruitful in the past," especially in situations such as Zakerian's in which the individuals' "work has transcended borders."
Penn Law Dean Michael Fitts said the Law School has a broad international program, including one of the largest contingents of Iranian students and scholars in the United States.
"I think we want to indicate how important it is both for the Iranian government and for the U.S. for [Zakerian} to come and visit with us," said Fitts. "Hopefully we will be able to hold a big reception and welcome professor Zakerian sometime in the near future."
Burke-White said Zakerian's situation shouldn't prevent Penn from recruiting Iranian scholars and students.
"I think that this will not stop us from reaching out to promise Iranian academics to include them in our community," he said.
He added that he hopes that, in the future, "we will be able to help our community understand the differences and . bridge the gap between western conceptions of human rights and Islamic conceptions of human rights."
