Everything changed for Iranian cosmologist Encieh Erfani in the fall of 2022. On 16 September, 22-year-old Mahsa Amini died in police custody in Tehran following her arrest for allegedly breaching the country’s strict dress code for women. In Mexico at the time for a visiting fellowship, Erfani followed the news as the largest demonstrations in Iran since 2009 ensued. A week after Amini’s death, Erfani spoke up in support of the “Woman, Life, Freedom” protest movement and resigned from her faculty position at the Institute for Advanced Studies in Basic Sciences in Zanjan. Soon after, she says, her family in Iran received a threatening phone call. Erfani chose to remain in exile, fearing imprisonment if she were to return home.
Born in Tabriz in northwestern Iran, Erfani studied physics at the University of Tabriz. In 2007 she began graduate studies in high-energy physics at the Abdus Salam International Centre for Theoretical Physics (ICTP) in Trieste, Italy, which led to a PhD from the University of Bonn, Germany, where she studied dark matter and primordial black holes.
Erfani returned to Iran after getting her degree and in 2015 became an assistant professor. Her ideas on academic freedom, and particularly on equity and diversity, put her at odds with her institution and with many of her colleagues, she says. Notably, she chose not to wear a hijab at conferences or on social media when she was outside Iran. “I knew that my colleagues [in Iran] would see and that I would pay for that,” she says. But, until recently, she “could never imagine that not wearing the hijab could cause you to be killed.”
After her resignation, Erfani was provided a temporary position at the ICTP. Since September she has been a visiting researcher at Mainz University in Germany. She identifies as an academic in exile and has been struggling to find a more permanent situation in which to continue her research. In an August paper she coauthored on primordial black holes in dwarf galaxies, she listed herself as a displaced scholar with no affiliation.
In 2022 Erfani cofounded the International Community of Iranian Academics, an independent international network of Iranian academics and students that seeks to provide a voice for Iranian people in academia. She continues to speak out about the recent suppression of dissent in Iranian universities. Hundreds of students have been arbitrarily arrested since the nationwide protests erupted in 2022, according to the Center for Human Rights in Iran, and dozens of professors have been fired, suspended, or forced into retirement. Erfani has also devoted time to helping other scholars in exile and to promoting greater academic freedom and mobility. She has discussed those issues in multiple forums, including the opening ceremony of the 2023 Science Summit at the United Nations General Assembly.
PT: When did you develop an interest in physics?
ERFANI: When I was a child, I was always curious about natural phenomena, like how a rainbow forms, but I didn’t know that these subjects were part of physics. In those days it was really dark at night in Iran, and I would sleep in my grandmother’s yard during the summer and see the constellations. In high school I had a really good science teacher, and he somehow persuaded me to like physics. I realized that astronomy was the subject that I liked most.
PT: Were you discouraged from studying physics?
ERFANI: At the bachelor’s level, the competition is almost fair; there are no gender bias issues. When you go to the master’s and PhD levels, the number of female students drops a lot. Of course, in the faculty it’s even less. Finding a job as a woman in academia is really complicated because the selection committees are male dominated, and they judge women more severely.
PT: How did you find academia in Iran on your return in 2012?
ERFANI: I became a student almost 20 years after the Iranian Revolution. The system was stable, and we had really good faculty members. But in the following years, many of them left the country. Pressure and suppression [of views not in line with the government] increased in the universities, as did the impact of sanctions on Iran. When I started my career as an assistant professor, I felt I had lost my academic freedom. I could not travel or participate in conferences because I could not get a visa and I could not get funding. I realized that I was trapped in a cage inside Iran.
There is no belief in inclusion, diversity, and equity in the Iranian system. After I became a faculty member, I gave a talk on diversity in science and the situation of women in physics worldwide. I didn’t focus on Iran because I knew it would be a difficult issue. I received critical comments from my colleagues. In my institute I was labeled a feminist and social activist. I received deep criticism from faculty members when I put a folder on my office door so that students could tell me anonymously about the gender bias they were facing in the institute.
PT: When did you make the decision to resign your physics faculty position in Iran?
ERFANI: I got a fellowship for three months at the National Autonomous University of Mexico. The death of Mahsa happened 26 days after I arrived. I said to myself, “You are always criticizing the system, so why don’t you speak out? This is the point to speak.”
Of course, I didn’t know that just a few hours after sending my resignation letter to the university, my family would be threatened. They received a call from a person saying they were from the regime’s intelligence services asking to speak with me. It was completely clear that there was no hope of going back home; I was forced to stay in exile. I never planned for it. I had packed my luggage for three months, and I did not say a proper goodbye to my family.
PT: What was the reaction from your colleagues in Iran?
ERFANI: Before I lost access to my university email, I received some student support. None of my colleagues contacted me, and some of them had my private email address. There was no support at all from the physics and astronomy community of Iran. Some said that I was using the situation to find a position abroad. Some put critical comments on social media and made up a rumor that I had been fired before I resigned.
PT: Have you received support from the physics community outside Iran?
ERFANI: I’ve gradually lost my faith in the scientific community. I wrote to many famous researchers around the world looking for a short-term position to save my life, and they didn’t even reply to my email. Asking for help is not easy. I would say, “Let’s wait a day more or a week more and maybe something good will happen,” but you wait months and months and that miracle never happens.
PT: Why did you decide to publish your latest study on black holes as an “author without affiliation”?
ERFANI: I wanted to make the scientific community aware that there are scientists like me in this situation. It’s really challenging for a scientist in exile to be productive because mentally you are not in a condition to focus on science. You are focused on saving your life.
At the beginning of my displacement, the protest movement was happening in Iran, and every day I was receiving really sad news. I was worried about my family and worried that any interview I was doing about the protests could endanger their lives. With all these challenges, I tried to somehow still publish, but I wanted my lack of affiliation to symbolize my status as a displaced scholar.
PT: How have your future aspirations changed?
ERFANI: If I get a chance, I would be really happy to continue as a cosmologist, looking for how dark matter and dark energy show themselves. But I have realized in the last year that we scientists are living in our bubbles. I think now it’s my duty to become a social activist to help other scientists who are displaced refugees or are in conflict conditions. Previously I collaborated with a project called Science in Exile. In 2021 we tried to help scientists from Afghanistan. Of course, I didn’t imagine that a year later I would become one of these scientists in exile. Now I really understand the deep meaning of being displaced.
For me, human rights are more valuable than science. Without human rights, without empathy and humanity, science can be dangerous. There are scientists who made nuclear bombs and supported totalitarian systems. I think it’s more important than ever to pay attention to ethical values in science. I hope we can change the minds of junior scientists so they realize that being a good person, a good student, a good supervisor is much more valuable than being only a good scientist. Now I don’t want to be great scientist; I’d prefer to be a great person.
