Friday, 27 February 2026 06:56 PM EST
It has been seven weeks since the Iranian government used brute force to extinguish huge nationwide protests. But public resistance to the Islamic Republic is still flickering on Iranian college campuses.
Anti-government demonstrations were held on at least 10 campuses in the past week, according to an exiled Iranian activist who tracks the country’s student movement, four students who witnessed protests, and social media videos. The students, who spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation, all spoke of rising anger on their campuses toward Iran’s leaders and confusion about the direction their country was headed.
The simmering tensions on campuses come as the Iranian government led by Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei faces threats of military action from the United States over the country’s nuclear program. The theocratic government is increasingly threatening students and administrators, with one official warning students this week not to cross a “red line.” A hard-line cleric who heads Iran’s judiciary stated that “crimes” would be punished if educational authorities failed to rein in protests.
Many universities have shut down their campuses and moved classes online. The switch to remote learning echoes steps authorities took late last year, when December protests over economic conditions spread nationwide, prompting internet shutdowns and a bloody crackdown. A complete toll of casualties from the crackdown remains slow to emerge due to internet restrictions imposed by authorities.
Independent human rights groups report more than 7,000 deaths and ongoing investigations into thousands additional fatalities. The government has acknowledged over 3,000 killed but has undercounted or withheld reports of past unrest. An exiled Iranian activist who tracks the student movement, Ali Taghipour, said at least 128 university students died in the nationwide unrest.
“It was the biggest massacre of university students” under the Islamic Republic,” he stated. “By the time the state made universities in-person again, it coincided with the (40 day) memorials of the killings of the January protests,” Taghipour added. Some campus memorials sparked new anti-government protests.
Protests erupted last Saturday at both Sharif University of Technology and Amir Kabir University. Social media videos show scuffles breaking out on campuses between pro-government supporters and protesters chanting, “Shameless! Shameless!” That chant is often used to taunt security forces and plainclothes agents like the Basij, the all-volunteer arm of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard.
Students at Al Zahra University in northern Tehran chanted anti-government slogans on Monday, according to videos. At the University of Tehran’s College of Foreign Languages, students held a rowdy demonstration chanting, “For each person killed, a thousand stand behind them!” The gathering began as a memorial for a student killed in January protests.
The protests have raised fears of a new crackdown. A government spokeswoman, Fatemeh Mohajerani, warned students to avoid crossing a “red line,” while an Iranian state television anchorwoman read a statement from the president of Sharif University apologizing for “inappropriate” events on campus. On Wednesday, Gholamhossein Mohseni Ejehi, the cleric who heads Iran’s judiciary, stated judicial authorities would intervene in punishing “crimes” on campuses if educational officials could not control them. Ejehi has become the face of Iran’s recent crackdown, advocating for fast-tracked punishments for protesters.
Universities across Iran have barred students from campus and held disciplinary hearings, with past cases resulting in expulsions and restrictions on further studies.
Iran’s college students have frequently propelled anti-government protests since 1999, when Tehran university demonstrations sparked early opposition to the Islamic Republic. Campus unrest also played a key role in supporting reformist leaders during 2008-2009 and sustaining openly anti-government demonstrations in 2022 that called for overthrowing Iran’s theocracy.
The refusal of hard-liners to implement policy changes, coupled with decades of Western sanctions and economic mismanagement gutting the middle class, has led many college-age students to conclude the Islamic Republic cannot be reformed. A doctoral student at the University of Tehran noted Reza Pahlavi—the son of the shah ousted in 1979—has emerged as “a serious political cause for some people,” though memories of the shah’s rule remain mixed with growing nostalgia for economic prosperity.
Years of repression have stifled organized opposition within Iran and shrunk spaces for political debate and organizing on campuses, according to a social sciences student at Tehran university. “After 2022, around 70% of student associations were closed,” the student said, including a progressive group he led. He expressed no clear hopes for where protests today might lead amid foreign military threats and the government’s willingness to repress dissent with deadly violence: “On the one hand, we are facing a government that isn’t afraid of killing anyone, and on the other hand, we are facing outside powers that support people being killed.”
A student at a university in northern Babol described rising fear about what war might mean for Iran. His personal hope is for a “democratic secular republic,” though he worries armed conflict could deepen suffering and “increase the risks of the country’s disintegration.” Iran already struggles to maintain basic services like electricity and water in some regions. The Babol university has kept courses remote since early January, preventing campus gatherings—many students have skipped classes as protest.
At Tehran university, another student disagreed with peers supporting Pahlavi, partly because the exiled figure has called for U.S. military action against Iran: “I’ll never understand a person who sits in London yelling for America to bomb Iran. How will they accept responsibility for what happens tomorrow?”
