Abbas-Ali Amid Zanjani (30 March 1937 – 30 October 2011) was an Iranian politician and cleric. He was the only cleric president of

University of Tehran The University of Tehran (UT) or Tehran University (, ) is a public collegiate university in Iran, and the oldest and most prominent Iranian university located in Tehran. Based on its historical, socio-cultural, and political pedigree, as well as ...

, who himself had no academic education of any kind, that served from 2005 to 2008.

Early life

Zanjani was a member of the Board of Directors of Imam Khomeini International University. He was also the founder of the Research Center for Studies and Researches on Islamic Sciences. Zanjani had strong political ties with Iranian conservatives and was a member of

Combatant Clergy Association The Combatant Clergy Association () is a politically active group in Iran, but not a political party in the traditional sense. It has never been registered as a political party; however, it acts as a fragmented caucus and has actively operated ...

. He had an active presence in reconsideration of the Constitution in 1989 as the delegate of the Parliament in the Revising Council. He has served as a member of

Parliament of Iran The Islamic Consultative Assembly (), also called the Iranian Parliament, the Iranian Majles (Arabicised spelling Majlis) or ICA, is the unicameral national legislative body of Iran. The parliament currently consists of 290 representatives, an i ...

from

Tehran Tehran (; , ''Tehrân'') is the capital and largest city of Iran. It is the capital of Tehran province, and the administrative center for Tehran County and its Central District (Tehran County), Central District. With a population of around 9. ...

for two terms.

Political career

Zanjani, an ethnic Iranian Azeri, was the only cleric president of

. Zanjani holds no secular academic degree and was appointed by

Mohammad Mehdi Zahedi Mohammad Mehdi Zahedi (born 1953 in Kerman) is an Iranian politician and was the former minister of science and technology in Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Zahedi was approved by Iran's parliament with the fewest supporting votes possible (supporters had ...

, the minister of Science, Research, and Technology in

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (born Mahmoud Sabbaghian on 28 October 1956) is an Iranian Iranian principlists, principlist and Iranian nationalism, nationalist politician who served as the sixth president of Iran from 2005 to 2013. He is currently a mem ...

's cabinet on 27 December 2005. Before his selection, the president of the University of Tehran was elected by the faculty members. After his establishment as the president of University of Tehran, many students protested in front of the Central Library, where the establishment ceremony was held. To date, this appointment is considered as one of the most disastrous decisions ever made in the Iranian academia. At the time of his appointment as the chancellor of Tehran University, Zanjani was a lecturer with a ranking equivalent to "associate professor". However, after his appointment, He and his allies tried to make a fake academic degree and university ranking for him. As an example Tehran University launched a webpage about his background education, claiming that "he holds a PhD degree from University Elites, Iran". During his post as the president of the university, Zanjani was repeatedly criticized for his mismanagements by students and academics. On 5 February 2008, Zanjani was replaced by economist academic Farhad Rahbar after three-days demonstration organized by Tehran University students. His teachings of Islamic International Law to the

LLM A large language model (LLM) is a language model trained with Self-supervised learning, self-supervised machine learning on a vast amount of text, designed for natural language processing tasks, especially Natural language generation, language g ...

students of

international law International law, also known as public international law and the law of nations, is the set of Rule of law, rules, norms, Customary law, legal customs and standards that State (polity), states and other actors feel an obligation to, and generall ...

and

public law Public law is the part of law that governs relations and affairs between legal persons and a government, between different institutions within a state, between different branches of governments, as well as relationships between persons that ...

is considered to be in full contrast with the most fundamental principles of law recognized by all civilized nations.

Expulsion of university scientists

In 2006, the Ahmadinejad government systematically forced numerous Iranian scientists and university professors to resign or to retire; this policy has been referred to as the "second cultural revolution". The policy was to replace older professors with younger ones. Many university professors received letters indicating their early retirement unexpectedly.آفتاب - ابعاد خانه نشین شدن استادان دانشگاه

References

External links

Iranian Students Protest Abrupt Installation of Conservative Cleric as President of Tehran U.
* ttp://www.bbc.co.uk/persian/iran/story/2005/11/051125_mf_amid.shtml First mullah as the chancellor of Tehran University(BBC Persian)
Students demonstrate against the appointment of new chancellor
BBC Persian) {{DEFAULTSORT:Zanjani, Abbasali Amid 1937 births 2011 deaths Iranian ayatollahs Combatant Clergy Association politicians People from Zanjan, Iran Deputies of Tehran, Rey, Shemiranat and Eslamshahr Members of the 4th Islamic Consultative Assembly Members of the 5th Islamic Consultative Assembly Iranian Science and Culture Hall of Fame recipients in Theology

Early life

Political career

Expulsion of university scientists

See also

References

External links