3Genealogy of the Cultural Revolution in Universities based on Critical Similarity of Orien-tation of Major Cultural Trends of Pre-Revolution Period

The present article is an attempt to study the pre-revolution trends that left their impacts on the event of Cultural Revolution in Universities (1980). Contrary to the dominant approach that considers this event a product of political skirmishes between the rival forces in the early period after the victory of the Islamic Revolution and introduces it as an event without any social necessity and a political act free from theoretical aspects, the findings of this paper show that the event of Cultural Revolution in Universities is the peak and pinnacle of a public demand, whose necessity had existed long time before the victory of the revolution in 1979 among the social forces and even the academic elite in late Pahlavi era, of course, on a different level and with different degrees. These forces, were critical of the “new science” as well as the scientific and university systems due to various reasons, including the impacts of Western self-criticism of post-World War II era, or due to the problems of the educational and university systems. This critical stance at times appeared in objective plans such as Educational Revolution or Islamic Education and sometimes in the form of subjective ideas such as “Indigenous Science”, “Sacred Science”, “Concerned Science”, etc. among the intellectual elites, strengthening the idea of change in the scientific-educational system on the threshold of the victory of the Islamic Revolution. The present paper’s contention is that the victory of the Islamic Revolution and the force produced by it, due to the Islamic nature of the Revolution and the type and diversity of its political forces, followed up this public demand on a higher level with a different orientation, whose early manifestation was seen in the event of the “Cultural Revolution in Universities” and its institution-building and policymaking. In order to trace back the genealogy of, and, identify this effective cultural-social trend, Foucault’s genealogical method has been employed.