This paper examines the techniques of control enacted towards universities and student activism in Iran. From a theoretical point of view, the paper elaborates on the literature focusing on the social control of dissent. This focus allows the overcoming of the studies on ‘policing of the protests’ for two reasons. First, it focuses on the control that the society as a whole enacts (and not only on the repressive apparatus) to include the techniques of power as theorised by Foucault through the notion of gouvernmentalité. Second, it allows a broader perspective on those who would dissent but are discouraged to do so by the devices of control that this paper examines. The ‘policing of protest’ studies indeed focus on repression as carried out by the police, the army or other para/military corpse, whereas the concern here is how dissent is contained and discouraged.
This particular focus can reveal much about the politics of controlling dissent, under both authoritarian and democratic rule. Universities indeed are both the locus of dissent par excellence and the place where values can be imposed to the young generations through education.
The paper will examine control on Iranian universities along three dimensions. First: the norms governing the campuses. They aim to restrict the room for dissent at the very geographical core of universities, namely the campuses. Second: the regime’s infiltration of student groups. This technique has resulted in a complete turnover of the groups existing on the campuses in Iran, eliminating those who were not accomplishing with the regime’s policies. The third dimension is violence and violent repression. Except for the 2009 crisis, in the last years, the paper contends, the role of violence has been downplayed thanks to the success of infiltration.
