According to Iranian human-rights activists, reports Science magazine, Iran's government has begun to remove academics who oppose President Mahmoud Ahmedinijad.
The new policy came to light after two electrical engineering professors at the Iran University of Science and Technology in Tehran were fired.
Science also discovered that a new set of hiring guidelines include checking whether applicants cooperate with institutions representing the Supreme Leader, and have belief in the existing political structure.
This new evaluation process "opens up the system to political influence," says Farhad Ardalan, a physicist who retired last year from Sharif University and is now a researcher at the Institute for Research in Fundamental Sciences in Tehran. "They have lowered the minimum so much that pretty much anybody could be hired," he says. "It's the worst thing that has happened to Iranian universities in the past 30 years."
