Azar Nafisi Quotes
When I was teaching at the University of Tehran we were struggling against the implementation of the revolution rules.
Nafisi, Azar. Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books. Random House, 2003.
This is another quotation which illustrates the corruption of the purposes of the FBI under J. Edgar Hoover. The director not only devoted his agency to enforcing the then existing law, but took it on himself to choose political sides and direct the efforts of his agents to disruption of critics of the government at the time.
This is one of the most indelicate political statements ever made. Normally, the argument that communists should be murdered is incendiary enough, but this remark came shortly after the Arizona attempted assassination of Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords where she was shot in the head.
While this quotation seems bizarre to us in modern America, there was some historical truth of this in Europe. Before political parties, the Church was the dominant political force, and no professor could be appointed whose views did not coincide with those of the church. Later political parties in many parts of Europe did concern themselves with the views of professors. However, America with its strong tradition of private universities built state public universities in the mold of Harvard, Yale, Brown, Columbia and Princeton where national and local politics were not major factors of appointment and retention of professors. Today it is very rare when a state legislature or government allows politics to become a factor in appointments of professors. The University of Virginia is the most dramatic exception where governors of the state serve for 2 years and when a new governor takes office, he replaces all the trustees and the University. These then have allowed politics to become a major factor in some dramatic cases. And the Federal Universities—the military service academies—do allow political views to encroach on the faculty appointment and retention decisions. However, this is rarely partisan in the sense of Democrat or Republican. But Professors who hold views contrary to BOTH political parties are rare.
Hypertrophy means: exaggerated or unnecessary growth or complexity
Azar Nafisi (Persian: آذر نفیسی; born 1948) is an Iranian-American writer and professor of English literature. Born in Tehran, Iran, she has resided in the United States since 1997 and became a U.S. citizen in 2008.
