Intellectual colossus
Educational standards were dreadful under the US-backed Shah. Since the Islamic revolution they have improved prodigiously. For example, the percentage of female STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics) graduates exceeds the United States, according to figures from Unesco.
The Islamic Revolution in Iran led to a huge increase in women in higher education. Before the Islamic Revolution, most Iranian women and men were illiterate, whereas now, the vast majority can read and write.
According to national census data, in 1966, only 17.42 percent of the Iranian female population was literate, and 39.19 percent of the male population was literate. In 1976, these figures were 47.49 percent for men and 35.48 percent for women.
By contrast, in 1986 - post-revolution - the women’s literacy rate had climbed to 52.1 percent. The second post-revolutionary national census in 1996 showed that 74.2 percent of the Iranian female population over the age of six were literate, and this figure was 74.7 percent for men.
The 2006 census revealed that 80.3 percent of the total female population over the age of six was literate; the corresponding figure for the male population was 88.7 percent. In 2022, UNESCO estimated Iran's female literacy rate at 99 percent among ages 15-24.
Norman Finkelstein taught John Stuart Mill at the Imam Sadiq University in Iran, in 2014. He said: "It was a very satisfying teaching experience… The religious scholars were definitely very smart, and very serious.
"It was kind of Plato’s Republic, and this is the guardian Philosopher Kings, and you had a sense that these people took ideas very seriously, and you can have a good conversation with them."
Finkelstein recalled a conversation with a student who did not have a mobile phone: "I asked 'why don't you own a cell phone?’, and he says, ‘why do you need a cell phone? All it enables you to do is to talk to people horizontally all around you, whereas if you read a book you can have a direct connection to God.' And I thought that was pretty impressive. I don't hear young people saying things like that. It was […] a special moment."