The resurgence of Jim Crow discrimination in the US

The ruling at the University of Massachusetts - one of the finest institutions of higher learning in the US - to no longer admit Iranian students to graduate schools of engineering and natural sciences is a deeply troubling development that marks a disturbing twist in the future of American academia.

"A University of Massachusetts decision this month to stop admitting Iranian nationals to certain engineering and science programmes at its Amherst campus," said NBC News, "has stirred charges of discrimination and a backlash among students who say it was unfairly imposed and could hurt the school's reputation."

Well it has. The problem originated with the university's own announcement on its website: "The University has determined that recent governmental sanctions pose a significant challenge to its ability to provide a full programme of education and research for Iranian students in certain disciplines and programmes."

Soon after the decision was announced, a wave of bad publicity emerged and UMass was forced to reverse its decision.

"The University of Massachusetts, under pressure for a policy that barred Iranian nationals from seeking admission to certain graduate science courses," the Los Angeles Times reported, "reversed itself on Wednesday and announced it will now accept the students."

This reversal, however, is not the end of the root causes or troubling consequences of such decisions, and not just regarding Iranian students but a much larger constituency in the US academic world, already scandalised by attempts at silencing voices of dissent critical of the US and its allies.

'Threat reduction'

The reversal of the UMass decision is not the end of the problem, for there is similar discrimination against Iranian students still in effect. There are even more elaborate reports that what UMass has done is not isolated or unique, and that this is a much more widespread practice among other universities.

"I'm actually a bit surprised," according to one observer following these discriminations closely, "it took UMass this long - I've heard a number of schools cut off Iranian students from these types of classes a while ago."

The more important question is why Iranian students are singled out for such discriminatory behaviour and not allowed to come to US to continue their education in the fields of their choice. Are they perhaps not smart enough?

Does the name Maryam Mirzakhani mean anything to you? "Iranian woman wins maths' top prize, the Fields medal." Well let's not get too rhetorical here. The issue is something else.

With such draconian measures, one can see why university admission offices are walking a very tight rope.

The reason Iranian students are singled out and discriminated against in UMass or any other university is because of these officials' reading of the Section 501 of the so-called "Iran Threat Reduction and Syria Human Rights Act of 2012".

This section of the act pertains to "Exclusion of citizens of Iran seeking education relating to the nuclear and energy sectors of Iran" - and it specifically mandates:

The Secretary of State shall deny a visa to, and the Secretary of Homeland Security shall exclude from the United States, any alien who is a citizen of Iran that the Secretary of State determines seeks to enter the United States to participate in coursework at an institution of higher education (as defined in section 101(a) of the Higher Education Act of 1965 (20 U.S.C. 1001(a))) to prepare the alien for a career in the energy sector of Iran or in nuclear science or nuclear engineering or a related field in Iran.

With such draconian measures, one can see why university admission offices are walking a very tight rope. So we need to go upstream and ask who exactly pushed for, demanded, and exacted such laws.

Who exactly, if you were to take a wild guess, do you think pushed for and celebrated the passing of this act?

Well of course, it was the fifth column of Israel in the United States: AIPAC. It cheered and danced on the grave of Iranian students' dreams of continuing their education in the US:

"AIPAC applauds the House passage (421-6) of the Iran Threat Reduction and Syria Human Rights Act. This bill represents the strongest set of sanctions the United States has ever imposed on any country during peacetime... AIPAC applauds bill authors Senate Banking Committee Chairman Tim Johnson (D-SD) and Ranking Member Richard Shelby (R-AL), and House Foreign Affairs Committee Chair Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-FL) and Ranking Member Howard Berman (D-CA)."

On behalf of Israel, AIPAC pushes the US Congress to pass such laws in order to discriminate against Iranian students, so that they might not be educated in fields even remotely connected to nuclear technology - so that Israel remains the only mighty nuclear power in the region and can thus continue to steal the rest of Palestine.

Much wider implications

But the issue is not limited to the Israeli fifth column waving its AIPAC wand and passing laws to harass and intimidate Iranian students. There are more dire consequences of such sinister acts of treason against Americans' real national interests - which include the autonomy and integrity of such civic institutions as its universities.

It is not just Iranian students who will be denied the opportunity to continue their higher education in the US. It is also American universities that will be deprived of having some of the brightest and most promising students enrich their academic programmes, as their autonomy to make such decisions are severely compromised by laws passed beyond their control.

Emery Berger, a computer science professor at UMass told NBC the ruling would dissuade talented Iranians from seeking out the university as a place to conduct research.

"I think there is a reasonable risk that these students will look at this unfortunate set of affairs and conclude that UMass Amherst is not a welcoming place for Iranian nationals to go," Berger said. "Which is definitely not the case, except there is now this ridiculous policy."

	US law now bans Iranians from studying anything related to the energy sector or nuclear engineering [Getty]

The issue, however, is much worse than Professor Berger rightly worries.

There are steady indications that US universities are dropping in worldwide league tables.

According to the 2014 World University Rankings, as reported in the Washington Post, "the outlook for the United States is described as not good. In fact, 'worrying evidence' is cited for decline in the United States (which holds 74 of the top 200 spots, down from 77 last year) and Canada as Asian schools rise in the rankings... Leading Asian institutions continue to rise. Asia now has 24 universities in the world top 200, up from 20 in last year's [rankings]. Two Asian universities now make the world top 25 and six make the top 50."

Iranian students denied admission into US universities will go to other countries in Asia, or to Russia, or to various universities in Latin America, anywhere from Mexico to Brazil and Argentina, and both benefit from those experiences and enrich their host countries.

The question is thus who exactly is the real loser in this bargain - negotiated so diligently on behalf of Israel by AIPAC and its stooges in the US Congress - Iranian students or US universities?

The key question is really for Americans to ask themselves which foreign "country" (in truth, an apartheid settler colony) is consistently contributing to the aggressive decline of civic institutions in the United States and its systematic transformation into a garrison state?

The singular achievement of Israel and its fifth column in the US is to "degrade and ultimately destroy" - President Obama's choice of goals for dealing with the Islamic State group - the quality of "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" in the United States.

The nation is thus reduced to a mere arsenal that provides arms, ammunition, and "lone soldiers" for its colonial conquest of Palestine and beyond.

It is not just in Palestine that Israel destroys universities - blowing them up in Gaza or laying siege to them in the occupied West Bank.

Zionism is constitutionally against any institutional formation of civil liberties anywhere in the Arab and Muslim world, or else of Arab and Muslim students anywhere around the globe.

Israel watches with much trepidation the increasing power of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement on North American and Western European campuses.

It is the autonomy of these civic institutions that bothers AIPAC and other Zionists, and in response they target the systematic corrosion of these institutions - civic or governmental.

Which other country on this planet would dare do what Binyamin Netanyahu is about to do? To address the US Congress against the will of its highest-ranking elected official and to decidedly interfere in their national interests?

What would that address mean to the democratic process that elects a president and places them in the White House?

The key question that the new generation of Americans needs to ask themselves is whose interests their elected officials actually serve when passing draconian laws such as the "Iran Threat Reduction and Syria Human Rights Act of 2012" - theirs? Or those of an apartheid settler colony half way around the globe?

Rethinking Jim Crow

The question is thus who exactly is the real loser in this bargain - Iranian students or American universities?

The publication of Michelle Alexander's excellent book The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness (2012) has been rightly praised for its timely argument that all is not well and dandy in Obama's America and the nasty spectre of racism, embodied in the so-called "Jim Crow laws" lingers ever more powerfully.

But in our assessment of the continued malady of racism in the US, we should not be fixated on only one racialised community and neglect the others.

Institutionalised racism and the extended shadows of the Jim Crow laws are not limited only to African Americans, and extend well into other communities - colour-coded, gendered, or racialised. Asians, Latinos/Latinas, and now Muslims share a similar - if not identical fate.

At a time when Arab and Muslim students are point blank executed on US campuses by racist Islamophobes, or Iranian students are openly discriminated against in North American universities, as mosques are burned down, buses and subways flooded with anti-Muslim advertisements, and a lucrative Islamophobic industry rewards otherwise talentless clowns like Bill Maher and his sidekick Sam Harris, it is long overdue to include systematic racism against Muslims in a more expanded understanding of the new Jim Crow.

Today, the bitter seeds of Islamophobia are harvested on the two fertile grounds of European anti-Semitism and North American racism and we need to understand this ugly reality in a much wider conception of the new Jim Crow that includes Asians, Latinos/Latinas, Muslims, Arabs, Indians, Iranians and more.

At the same time, there is another question - this one that the Iranian students denied access to higher education in the US need to ask themselves.

Who is instrumental in such discriminatory acts against them: Palestinians, Lebanese, or Israel and its US agents?

In the course of the Green Movement in Iran, there was a slogan: "Neither Gaza nor Lebanon, my life I will sacrifice for Iran." The slogan was deliberately targeted against the official rhetoric of Iran's ruling regime that had made its support for Hamas and Hezbollah a camouflage for domestic repression.

Those who were chanting these slogans were of course entirely entitled to their opinion and position. But the slogan did not remain at the level of rhetoric and a few charlatans among the Iranian opposition took it much further to advance their opportunist Zionism, visit Israel, and seriously compromise the integrity of the Green Movement - which, at its core, had a solid solidarity with the Palestinian national liberation movement.

These discriminations against Iranian students interested in "hard" sciences have yet another side: the predicament and final demise of social sciences and the humanities in the Islamic Republic of Iran itself, where its Supreme Leader has consistently denounced these branches of higher education and ordered their "Islamisation".

Over the past three decades and more, the Islamic Republic has presided over the systematic destruction of social sciences and the humanities in Iran, so much so that a mere visit with German philosopher Jurgen Habermas is considered a crime punishable by a long prison sentence.

Between the horrors of the ruling regime in Iran, from which generations of students have run away in search of more healthy environments for their education, and the terrorising power of the US and Israel to destroy the institutions of civil liberties in the US (or anywhere else), it is not just the fate of Iranian students that hangs in the balance.