For Pouya Seifzadeh, an associate professor at SUNY Geneseo in Western New York, this year’s mass killings of protesters in Iran brings back memories of injustice he and his peers dealt with while speaking up versus the very same program 27 years back.
At that time, Seifzadeh joined his undergraduate classmates in Tehran in requiring more civil liberties. He took part in the 1999 demonstrations that began after Iranian authorities banned the newspaper, Salam, for works that criticised the country’s authoritarian government. Although the protests were peaceful, the nation’s security forces assaulted trainees in their dormitories for participating, killing a minimum of 4 and wounding over 300, according to Human being Rights Watch. Seifzadeh keeps in mind becoming aware of students being thrown from their dormitory, falling numerous stories.
Since then, the Iranian routine has stepped up its crackdown on dissent. In January, security forces and militias killed thousands– potentially tens of thousands by some estimates– of people throughout demonstrations that started over the collapse of Iran’s currency. That consisted of killings at student-led demonstrations, according to The Guardian. “When I see numerous students eliminated in the streets, I feel that there’s a greater degree of animosity of the program that existed ever before amongst this generation,” he stated.
After that came the war, now entering a 5th week, which started after United States and Israel airstrikes killed Iran’s supreme leader– followed by his child, Mojtaba Khamenei, presuming the role. Khamenei has been criticised for having hardline views similar to his daddy.
Political oppression is one reason why many of Iran’s brightest students pick to study abroad and eventually emigrate, Seifzadeh stated. One survey found that 93% of Iranians surveyed have actually considered leaving the country– with greater portions amongst students and university graduates. Iran Open Data, an organisation intending to promote transparency in Iran, carried out that survey on social media to evaluate the extent of Iran’s brain drain.
Seifzadeh left Iran in the early 2000s for a PhD program in business technique in Ontario, Canada. He then relocated to the United States with his spouse, also Iranian, for work as university professor. He said most of his schoolmates in Iran expressed a desire to leave, in the middle of a lack of chances, gender inequalities, and other challenges.
“Iran is well-known for its brain drain and, for numerous Iranians, higher education is among the most simple courses to immigration,” he stated.
More than 110,000 Iranians are currently studying abroad. However, for the majority of students in Iran, studying in the United States is no longer a choice due to the fact that of President Donald Trump’s travel ban. Rather, Iran’s leading scholastic talent is heading to other western countries, indicating that the United States can’t capitalise on Iran’s “brain drain” like it when did.
“Lots of [Iranians] significant in STEM fields. They extremely quickly adapt to US values and a great deal of them develop into entrepreneurs,” Seifzadeh stated. “Cutting them off, obviously, is going to affect the US economy in science.”
Access to new opportunities
For Iranian women, studying abroad can give them liberty to check out fields they’re barred from studying in their country, stated Ramesh Sepehrrad, a cybersecurity and government author and checking out fellow at George Mason University in Virginia. In 2012, ladies were prohibited from 77 majors at Iranian universities, mostly engineering or accounting fields.
Sepehrrad moved from Iran to Buffalo, New York, as a teenager in 1985 with her household looking for defense. A number of member of the family were kept as political detainees in Iran, she stated, over their support for opposition groups. That included her sis, a student activist who was arrested at age 13 and put behind bars for two-and-a-half years.
Not long after relocating to the United States, Sepehrrad started studying computer technology at the University of Buffalo. As an US trainee, she keeps in mind having access to writings from several perspectives and freedom to choose any profession course for the first time.
“I was among the lucky ones to be paid for the opportunity to leave the nation, to be here, safe, and to pick my own discipline,” she said.
In Iran, laws likewise avoid females from working in particular fields or taking a trip outside the nation without authorization from a male guardian– either a relative or their hubby. In addition, women are forbidden from acting as judges or high-ranking government positions and have actually been locked up or flogged for violating the nation’s dress code.
These laws, Sepehrrad stated, have led a few of Iran’s brightest female doctors and students to emigrate in look for better opportunities. In Iran, women comprise around 60% of university graduates, however only 14% are in the labor force, according to 2025 data from the World Bank.
Sepehrrad also mentioned decades of violent crackdowns as an offender for Iran’s brain drain. Video from this year shows security forces entering into hospitals and apparently avoiding medical staff from dealing with injured protesters. Sepehrrad stated that, when authorities target medical professionals, nurses, and professors, there’s little reward to stay. In 2022 alone, 6,500 physicians, including 2,300 specialists, left Iran, according to Iran Open Data.
“This brain drain is going to lead into some sort of health crisis since there are insufficient physicians and medical professionals and nurses to deal with the public health situation there,” she stated.
For many Iranians, higher education is among the most straightforward courses to immigration
Pouya Seifzadeh, SUNY Geneso
New locations for global trainees
For Iranian international students, Canada, Turkey, Germany, Italy, and the US have actually been some of the top destinations this decade.
Throughout the 2024 academic year, before the travel ban restarted, the United States hosted around 12,600 trainees from Iran, according to the most recent data from Open Doors. That number fades in contrast to the 51,300 Iranians the nation hosted in 1980.
In the mid-1970s and early 1980s, the United States hosted more worldwide students from Iran than any other country, according to United States State Department data. Those numbers have actually been falling ever since the 1979 transformation that set up Iran’s theocratic federal government. While Iranian trainee enrolment has diminished in the United States over the decades, it’s been growing in other countries.
Canada hosts more than double the number of Iranian students compared to the United States– around 26,300, according to the Canadian federal government’s most current information. In Germany, the variety of Iranian students has actually tripled in the previous 15 years, going beyond 13,000 in 2023, according to Germany’s analytical office.
During the Trump administration’s very first term, Iranian trainees were still permitted to study abroad in the US. His first 2 travel bans impacting Iran lasted just 90 days each and his 3rd ban made an exception for admitted trainees. Now, in Trump’s second term, his travel restriction on Iran consists of nonimmigrants such as students, unless they currently had a visa before the restriction entered impact.
Seifzadeh believes that the most current travel restriction might have been better structured to concentrate on vetting people rather of prohibiting Iranians completely. He’s worried about the United States depriving itself of highly informed Iranians who want to get away the routine and would become patriotic Americans.
“That’s where I think the US might have done a much better task, not painting everybody with the very same brush,” he said.
However, he’s likewise concerned about pro-regime Iranians entering the United States and spying on local Iranian communities. A few of Seifzadeh’s good friends who studied internationally were arrested upon going back to Iran, he stated, due to the fact that someone in their circle was notifying the program.
Ultimately, Seifzadeh hopes for a future where Iranians are devoid of oppression and totally free to study anywhere they pick. While his instant household resides in the United States, he fears for relatives who are still residing in Iran amid the war.
“A lot of the policies that the routine has pursued has actually separated itself. That’s really had an influence on Iranian trainees,” he stated.
While lots of Iranian trainees have actually decided to study globally, others have actually stayed home and end up being leaders in the resistance movement. For years, university campuses have worked as foundations for the pro-democracy movement, Sepehrrad stated. A number of her favourite mottos that protesters have actually been chanting initially begun on campuses.
“I believe teachers and college student have a really strong role to play for the movement for a complimentary Iran, for declining any kind of tyranny and saying we want a nonreligious republic,” she stated.
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