Revolutionary Engineers

The cultural, political, and pedagogical history of an elite Iranian engineering institution in the years directly preceding the 1979 Iranian revolution.

In 1966, the Shah of Iran established Aryamehr University of Technology (AMUT), now known as Sharif University of Technology, as part of a larger campaign to modernize the nation. In 1979, AMUT engineering students played a critical role in the revolution that overthrew the Shah and his regime. In Revolutionary Engineers, Sepehr Vakil, Mahdi Ganjavi, and Mina Khanlarzadeh show how Western notions of scientific and technical rigor combined in unexpected ways with Iranian and Islamic values at AMUT in the years directly preceding the 1979 Iranian revolution. They also argue that global perspectives, particularly from the Global South, can deepen and complicate contemporary discussions on ethics, epistemology, and knowledge production in STEM fields.

The authors present the cultural, political, and pedagogical history of AMUT, from its 1966 establishment up to its pivotal role in the 1979 revolution, while delving into the complex interplay of global, national, and Islamic values in STEM education. In the past several years, STEM education scholars have challenged the epistemological and ontological foundations of STEM education research and practice, while deepening the field's engagement with questions of power, ethics, race, and justice. The case of AMUT presents the opportunity to contribute a Global South perspective to studies of the civic, cultural, and political functions and foundations of science and engineering education. Sharif University continues to be at the epicenter of politics in Iran.Preface
Introduction
Chapter 1: Political and Pedagogical History of Aryamehr University of Technology (1966-1979)
Chapter 2: The MIT-AMUT Partnership in Shaping a Regional STEM Leader
Chapter 3: Dr. Seyyed Hossein Nasr at AMUT: Bridging Science, Philosophy, and Controversy (1972-1975)
Chapter 4: The Rise of Faculty and Student Activism at AMUT
Chapter 5 : Gender Relations at AMUT
Chapter 6: Political Identities, Learning and Social Experiences of AMUT students
Conclusion
Epilogue
Bibliography
Appendix: Oral History Protocol"Revolutionary Engineers uncovers the captivating story of Sharif University’s role in Iran’s 1979 revolution, challenging conventional STEM narratives and offering a profound lens on the power of students to shape history."
—Ruha Benjamin, Princeton University, author of Race After Technology

“By drawing on a broad range of primary and secondary material, Revolutionary Engineers offers an informative and lucid survey of the educational excellence and radical student activism during the late Pahlavi Iran.”
—Ali Gheissari, author of Iranian Intellectuals in the Twentieth Century

"Drawing upon voices of student and faculty activists, the authors refreshingly explore how and why people engage with STEM to achieve liberatory goals, offering a nuanced examination of the ethical dimensions of sensemaking in a politicized discipline and context—essential reading in the learning sciences."
—Angela Calabrese Barton, Professor and Chair of Educational Studies, University of Michigan

"This novel contribution documents an important social movement that places Sharif University and its engineering dominance in Iran’s and broader global political histories. Vakil and colleagues’ attention to complexity reveals the tensions and paradox in learning and identity, in movements, and the disciplines themselves, while helping us re-imagine how technology can be a tool of resistance, dignity, and respect."
—Kris D. Gutiérrez, Carol Liu Chair and Distinguished Professor, Learning Sciences and Human Development, UC, Berkeley

“From the early nineteenth century to this day, Iran has been an epicenter of revolutionary mobilizations against foreign domination and domestic tyranny. Based mostly on fresh oral history, Revolutionary Engineers details the nucleus of a counterintuitive pedagogical event in Iran in the mid-twentieth century, when the students and faculty of a major school of engineering were as bold and brilliant in their STEM research as they were defiant and daring in their revolutionary aspirations for their homeland. There is a serious lesson in this study for the current epistemic crisis in social sciences and the humanities in their posthuman phases as who dares to dream bigger and better beyond the nuts-and-bolts fragility of our daily lives: those who put their noses to the grinder or those who loiter, reading Marx, Freud, and Adorno, and write the postcolonial predicament of our ravaged earth. This book has much to say on the crosscurrent traffic of that critical conversation.”
—Hamid Dabashi, Hago Kevorkian Professor of Iranian Studies and Comparative Literature, Columbia University; author of Theology of Discontent: The Ideological Foundation of the Islamic Revolution in IranSepehr Vakil is Associate Professor of Learning Sciences in the School of Education and Social Policy at Northwestern University.

Mahdi Ganjavi is a Lecturer in the Faculty of Information at the University of Toronto.

Mina Khanlarzadeh is EUME Fellow at the Forum Transregionale Studien.