According to Parchizadeh, those who fail the vetting process will be barred from pursuing higher education, regardless of their qualifications. 

The dean of the Islamic Azad University of Iran, Hamid Mirzadeh, has stated that all those who have already been admitted to the university will also be vetted by the Ministry of Intelligence and its dependent organizations. 

Parchizadeh writes, “The new law, passed by the Supreme Committee of the Cultural Revolution, has led to the screening of Since the Islamic Revolution of 1979, vetting and barring the activities of all sorts of academics for ideological reasons has been the order of the day in Iran. The so-called Cultural Revolution of the early 1980s managed to purge all kinds of allegedly Westernizedprofessors, students and staff from Iranian colleges. Many were expelled or arrested and imprisoned, and not a small number were tortured and killed. That was admittedly done in order to ‘purify’ the Iranian academy and to render it ‘Islamic.” 

Many programs in liberal humanities departments were deemed ‘Western’ and ‘Anti-Islamic,’ in recent years.  Law, philosophy, sociology, psychology, and political science, have been replaced with Islamic counterparts, reflecting the regime’s ideological stance. 

“In addition, foreign languages and literature came under heavy scrutiny. Militant versions of Third-Worldist and post-colonial theories that adopted radical anti-Western attitudes became the official discourse in Iranian humanities departments. Most recently, a number of universities and academic organizations have introduced separate courses for men and women,” says Parchizadeh.  

The new vetting process is one more way the regime shows it’s disregard human rights in general, and the Iranian citizensright to a free and liberal education in particular.