Academia undermined by political entrepreneurs, emotional activism and poor media coverage

FYI: This article is the original version which I sent for publication in SGIA newsletter. As the news letter is yet to be released I taught it would be good to put it here in advance.
Ehsan Abdoh

The Brawl over the "Iranian Theocracy & Democracy" Seminar
Academia undermined by political entrepreneurs, emotional activism and poor media coverage.
By Ehsan Abdoh,
Durham University's PhD candidate and member of Centre for Iranian studies

The recent row over Centre for Iranian Studies' "Iranian Theocracy & Democracy" seminar outlines some of the basic problems within the world we live in. Much of this little escapade was caused by the same factors poisoning and discrediting the way journalists and political activists choose to operate: misrepresentation of truth due to political and personal interests, loose babble and minute yet significant mistakes. These byproducts of political disdain have a tradition of bullying academia and academic cooperation. We in the small but active Centre for Iranians Studies (CIS) were surprised to find ourselves in the most recent dispute over academic cooperation.

At the centre of this spectacle was David Toube, AKA David T, political commentator, blogger, and proud owner of the political website Harry's Place. At first glance Mr. Toube's article on the Seminar seemed to raise genuine concerns about the event and the memorandum of understanding between CIS and Cultural Centre of Islamic Republic of Iran in UK. Mr. Toube's alarm was partly justified by the way the seminar was portrayed by Islamic Republic News Agency (IRNA) which had misquoted both the title and the agenda of the seminar. Durham University and CIS take such matters very seriously and have already discussed it at length with Cultural Councillor of Iranian Embassy.

However, in his article and subsequent comments and "interview" with Palatinate, Mr. Toube's legitimate questions lurched into self-serving demands and baseless accusations. His readers' comments were even more ludicrous and sometimes so shamelessly bogus that leads us to believe that the most ardent readers of Mr. Toube are hopelessly misinformed, emotionally disturbed and cynically uninterested in truth; not to mention having very weird names! Mr. Toube went as far as accusing CIS and Durham University of promoting IRI's policies in exchange for "cash handouts".

Palatinate's careless coverage of this ordeal was another sad sequence of this business. As the official student newspaper of Durham University, Palatinate has a duty for fair and balanced coverage of all university related news. This has not been the case with the "Iranian Theocracy & Democracy" seminar; in which the mere title of the report is offensive. While the reporter did interview Mr. Toube, he did not bother to contact the CIS. Also Palatinate misquoted Vice-Chancellor's remarks which added another twist to this strife. We accept that all these may have been honest mistakes but editors of Palatinate must know that such mistakes ruin reputations.

In all this David Toube, carried himself with a disturbing sense of self-importance: asking the CIS to disclose its' "Memorandum of Cooperation" to him, and demanding Parliament inquiry on the matter and ... For someone whose main political achievement has been a short mentioning in the 'Private Eye', Mr. Toube seem quite found of overindulging his ego, which leads me to question the sincerity of his actions. He could have at least tried to contact the CIS officials but did not even bother to follow up the seminar, presumably because he had bigger fishes to fry. This further degrades his "supposed concerns" into self-serving political entrepreneurship.

Political activism has always been valued for its' stand on conscious and fight against immoral compromises and hypocrisy. Today it suffers from lack of objectivity and is haunted by political opportunists and with it suffers the academia.