ETHICS BRIEF 10-09-2022

Professor, Equity Advisor, and Ethics Center Board Member Mahtab Jafari works to help Iranians facing persecution and violence on their university campuses. October 7, 2022 UCI has the privilege of having a diverse faculty, students, and staff from around the world. Events taking place in Iran recently were precipitated by the tragic and unjust killing of Mahsa Amini on September 16, 2022, while detained by the morality police. Amini had been arrested for wearing an “inadequate hijab” and her death has triggered ongoing peaceful protests in Iran and around the globe, including here and elsewhere in Southern California. At UCI, Professor, Equity Advisor, and Ethics Center member Mahtab Jafari has spoken out in public and with local leaders at the Orange County Board of Supervisors asking that the United States do more to support one of the largest national examples of efforts to uphold basic human rights.

These events in Iran alarm and trouble us as people concerned with human rights everywhere, of course, but especially as members of a fellow university community. Student protests in Iran have been brutally repressed, resulting in numerous deaths over the last 3 weeks. One special example of concern occurred on October 2nd, 2022, at Sharif University of Technology. The alma mater of a significant proportion of UCI engineering students, Sharif students were cornered by the government militia on the grounds of the University. Best estimates suggest hundreds of innocent students were terrorized and tortured behind the locked doors of the University itself. Many were taken into custody, battered and are still in prison. Video footage of the events brings home the tragedy and anxiety felt by all Iranians around the world. We join with members of the Iranian faculty at the UCI College of Health Sciences to request both a letter of condemnation of the atrocities against members of another academic institution with strong student ties to UCI and the provision of psychological and other necessary support to UCI members who have been afflicted by these developments. We join the other universities in the UC system that have already released statements and acted against these atrocities.

MESSAGE FROM THE DIRECTOR
We are concluding our summer mentoring program this week (the end of July 2022) and want to thank everyone involved for their help. We are adding two items (below) via video clips. The first summarizes the work done in the nine different modules taught this summer.( video B which I will send) The second describes work done on how to combat prejudice and includes video descriptions of work done by students in Political Science 138 taught spring term 2022 and funded by an Illuminations grant from the Chancellor. We are proud of the work done by the students featured in both videos and are grateful for the financial support. (Final Project Introducation Video)