Dear friends,
	I would like to respectfully request that you inform yourselves of a gross injustice occurring in Iran against the Baha?i community of Iran and, if you are willing, to invite you to protest this injustice.
	What is the nature of this injustice?  It is the denial of the right to higher education of all Baha?i youth in Iran.  If you are familiar with the Baha?i Faith, you will know that it was the largest minority faith community in Iran prior to the Islamic Revolution.  It had been subjected, however, to systematic repression ever since it originated in 1844 in what was then known as Persia.  Because the Founder of the Baha?i Faith, Baha?u?llah, claimed to fulfill the scriptural promises concerning the return of Jesus Christ and the Great Announcement, it was regarded as a heresy by the Muslim clerics.  More than 20,000 Baha?is met their deaths as a result of the animosity of the combined forces of the government and Islamic clergy. 
In 1979, after the Islamic Revolution, Baha?i children were prohibited from attending school all over the country.  However, international pressure eventually led to Baha?i elementary and secondary students being allowed to return to school.  But higher education has remained a forbidden territory.
The government has used a very simple mechanism to exclude Bahá?ís from higher education: it has simply required that everyone who takes the national university entrance examination declare their religion. And applicants who indicate other than one of the four officially recognized religions in Iran ? Islam, Christianity, Judaism, and Zoroastrianism ? are excluded.
Baha?is responded creatively to this exclusion, creating the Baha?i Institute for Higher Education, which offered higher education via the web in collaboration with a number of academic institutions around the globe.  But in 1998, agents of the government staged a series of raids, arresting at least 36 members of the BIHE?s faculty and staff and confiscating much of its equipment and records.  This effectively squelched the efforts of Baha?i students to obtain higher education, but it did result in international protest regarding to this unjust practice. This in turn led the government in 2003 to announce that religious affiliation would not be required on the applications for the entrance exam.
   However, then a new strategy was then employed to deny Baha?is admittance:  a religious exam was required as part of the entrance exam.  Students were required to take either a Christian, Jewish, Zoroastrian, or Islamic exam.  When Baha?i students chose the Islamic exam (as they were most familiar with Islam from their own religious classes) , their applications were then stamped with ?Islam? as their religion.  Because Baha?is cannot dissemble and deny their own religious affiliation, this became an ipso facto method of again denying admission to the universities. 
	You can read the details concerning the current status in the efforts of young Iranian Baha?is to obtain higher education at www.denial.bahai.org.   But if we were to summarize, we would simply say that the government of Iran has schemed to appear to be responsive to international concerns about human rights while simultaneously erecting insurmountable barriers to Baha?i students.  
	The good news is that international pressure does have an impact.  Hence, I am asking your support in providing that pressure. Who understands better the value of higher education than the faculty and staff of a good university?  
	Please communicate your concerns regarding this injustice to one or all of the following agencies:

	Amnesty International, at www.amnesty.org

	The United Nations High Commissioner on Human Rights, at 
United Nations Office at Geneva
1211 Geneva 10, Switzerland

	Mr. Kofi Anan, Secretary-General, United Nations
		United Nations Plaza
		New York, New York 10017-3515


Thank you.
Regards,
Mary K. Radpour