Princeton History PhD Arrested in Iran

[VAZ]

 

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/16/world/middleeast/iran-rouhani-brother-arrest-united-states-nuclear.html

https://www.princeton.edu/news/2017/07/16/princeton-supporting-graduate-student-sentenced-prison-iran

 

Have you guys read about this news? What's your comment? I'm sort of glad that communism is not ruling Eastern Europe anymore ... Otherwise, my archival trip would somehow be ut supra.

BTW, the poor guy got his wikipedia page because of this......

[TMP]

Always frustrating to hear of Americans getting arrested in Iran and North Korea.

My Turkish colleague who was in my PhD program was very fortunate to be a Turkish citizen to be able to do her research in Iran.  She was also working with private collections, not state materials, I think. What that student did was a very risky move as an American citizen (and his race likely drew some attention).  The adviser is partially blamed for this approval of his dissertation research in Iran and I'm sure s/he is kicking him/herself right about now.

As for comparing to Eastern Europe, this is a bit different.  For one, the archives were closed then Right now, the Russian historians are keeping a close eye on Russia in hopes of not messing with their ability to keep researching there (and working a bit faster while there if not already).

[guest56436]

Sad but not uncommon occurrence. There was another recently that got imprisoned in one of the Central Asian countries. Always a risk doing research in countries with authoritarian regimes.

[JKL]

What's worse is that we'll never know if he actually committed espionage. The Iranian government is known for a lot of things, but practicing the theories of due process and innocent until proven guilty aren't among them. The article below from ten days ago (it also includes a transcribed interview with his wife) says the archives were public. If he did anything, my guess is that he stumbled upon a document that was supposed to be classified but wasn't. I don't know. Then again, we can't rationalize the irrational; it's quite possible that he did nothing wrong. Perhaps the simplest explanation is that the Iranian government is nuts.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/18/world/middleeast/iran-china-xiyue-wang.html