Planning A Utopia For Iran

In the Shirkola Forest on the south shore of the Caspian Sea in Iran, the oak trees are as thick as the ones in old Errol Flynn Robin Hood movies, according to Richard G. Leahy, and he adds proudly, "There are still leopards there."

Leahy, associate dean of the Faculty for resources and planning, has a stake in the Shirkola Forest because it is in the midst of the national parkland that a joint Harvard-Iran commission has earmarked for a graduate university.

Harvard has gotten $400,000 for its involvement, but this sum is only to cover expenses, and Leahy is hard put to say just what Harvard expects to get out of the project.

He says that Harvard academics--a dozen went on the most recent, May trip to Iran--are anxious to get in on any "exotic academic enterprise" but that the plans for the University do not specify how many places in the research facility Harvard faculty will get.

The report of the commission envisions a somewhat utopian community, removed by 160 miles and the Elburz Mountains from Iran's crowded urban nightmare, Teheran. The planned city is supposed to grow to include 50,000 people as well as an undergraduate college, a secondary school and health facilities.

Everything will be conducted in English, and Leahy says that the purpose of the graduate university to be ready for 500 students in five years is to nurture an "elite" for Iran.

Leahy says that the commission was concerned about academic freedom in Iran, a country where police are stationed in every classroom, but that it hopes to insure a western model of university freedom through its plans for a nine-member board of governors with significant foreign representation.

The University is also connected to Iran's own elite through its proposed center for community health, which is part of the new medical complex that, Leahy says, is being built as a "direct interest" of the royal family. The health center will be staffed by post-graduate M.D.s working towards Ph.Ds at the planned Imperial Medical Complex in Teheran.

While the Iranians' elaborate physical plans for the complex emphasize research facilities, Dr. Dieter Koch-weser, associate dean of the Medical School for international programs, has gone with representatives from the other two universities to Teheran this week to make sure the primary objective remains one of learning about health care in developing countries. To do this, Koch-weser says, he has to be sure more health care will be provided for the people, rather than the elite, of Iran.