The áʼíBaháʼí Institute for Higher Education (BIHE), is a unique open university in Iran, which has been portrayed as an underground university, established by the Baháʼí community of Iran in 1987 to meet the educational needs of young people who have been systematically denied access to higher education by the Iranian government. Currently, through a main faculty in Iran and an Affiliated Global Faculty from universities around the world, BIHE offers a total of 40 undergraduate and graduate programs in Sciences, Engineering, Business and Management, Humanities, and Social Sciences. More than 110 universities in North America, Europe, and Australia have thus far accepted the BIHE's graduates directly into programs of graduate study at the masters and doctoral levels. BIHE has a decentralized and fluid structure and uses a hybrid approach of offline and online delivery methods which has enabled it to grow under unusual sociopolitical circumstances. Despite numerous arrests, periodic raids, several imprisonments, mass confiscation of school equipment and general harassment, BIHE has continued and even expanded its operation. BIHE has received praise for offering a non-violent, creative, and constructive response to ongoing oppression.
Context
Persecution of the Baháʼís of Iran
Since its birth in the 19th century, the Baháʼí community of Iran has faced different forms of persecution including hostile propaganda and censorship, social exclusion, denial of education and employment, confiscation and destruction of property, arson, unjustified arrests and imprisonment, physical and psychological torture, death threats, arbitrary executions and disappearances. The Islamic Revolution of 1979 intensified the persecutions and made Baháʼís - the largest religious minority of the country - the target of a systematic state-sponsored campaign of repression. Within this ongoing campaign, over two hundred Baháʼís have been executed; thousands more have been imprisoned, have lost their jobs, been denied their pensions, been expelled from schools and universities, been denied health care, had their personal property plundered, and had their grave sites defiled. The modern persecution of Iranian Baháʼís now continues in its fourth decade. In the 2016 annual report to the UN General Assembly, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, refers to the Baháʼí community of Iran as “the most severely persecuted religious minority” of the country.
Denial of the right to education
The denial of the right to higher education is a tool wielded by the Iranian government on many whose ideology contradicts or threatens the authority of the ruling clerics; however, the Baháʼís are the only group to face pervasive class denial of this right. The efforts of the Iranian government to deny Baháʼís the right to education is seen by Baháʼís as part of its coordinated efforts to eradicate the Baháʼí community as a viable group within Iranian society.
Shortly after the Iranian Revolution in 1979, large numbers of Baháʼí students, ranging across the entire education system from primary through secondary and university level, were expelled from schools and blocked from continuing their education. Similarly, Baháʼí professors and faculty members were dismissed from all universities and academic institutions of the country. In the 1980s, partly in response to international pressure, primary and secondary school children were allowed to re-enroll. However, up to today the government has maintained the ban on the entry of Baháʼí youth into public and private colleges and universities.
The official decree barring Baháʼí students from admission to public university was issued in 1981. That year universities established a new admission system where only individuals who identified themselves with one of the four religions recognized by the Constitution of the Islamic Republic of Iran– i.e. Islam, Christianity, Judaism and Zoroastrianism – were given admission. The systematic expulsion of students and faculty had become clear to Baháʼís by 1983.
In 1991, the government reiterated that policy, in a private memorandum prepared by the Iranian Revolutionary Council and approved by Ayatollah Khamenei which states that “The Government's dealings with [the Baháʼís] must be in such a way that their progress and development are blocked. ... They can be enrolled in schools provided they have not identified themselves as Baháʼís. ... Preferably they should be enrolled in schools which have a strong and imposing religious ideology. ... They must be expelled from universities, either in the admission process or during the course of their studies, once it becomes known that they are Baháʼís."