Fariba Adelkhah, the embodiment of scientific freedom

Abstract

Fariba Adelkhah is an Iranian-French scholar, and Director of Research at Sciences Po, Paris. In her role as a researcher, and based solely on her anthropological work, she was arrested at Tehran airport on 5 June 2019. Fariba was then incarcerated in Iran's Evin Prison, until her recent release, in February 2023. Throughout her difficult personal journey, Fariba Adelkhah has continuously embodied the categorical imperative of scientific freedom and the highest intellectual and moral standards. In this lecture, Béatrice Hibou, Senior Researcher at the Sciences Po Centre for International Studies, seeks to illustrate what this embodiment of scientific freedom truly means. Béatrice will focus on how Fariba preserved her autonomy from political authorities, and how she showed great independence from intellectual or scientific trends, defending scientific freedom in relation to the academic community, or the dominant ideological trends in civil society. Finally, Béatrice will reflect on how Fariba's fight for scientific freedom continued in prison, opening the floor to a more general debate on current trends that challenge scientific freedom, not only in authoritarian countries like Iran, but also in democracies.