Vol 447|21 June 2007 NEWS Academic freedom under threat in

The jailing of three US-Iranian academics in social-science colleagues. Haghighatjoo, a Iran on accusations of fomenting a ‘velvet revo- reformist former member of parliament and lution’ signals that Iranian academics and aca- a renowned human-rights advocate, says aca- demic freedom could be casualties of the tense demics who deal with Iran’s social, cultural or stand-off between Iran and the United States. political situation are at the most risk. The Iranian judiciary has said it will decide Yousef Sobouti, an astrophysicist and direc- this week whether to indict the imprisoned tor of the Institute for Advanced Studies in scholars on charges of espionage and threaten- Basic Sciences (IASBS) in Zanjan, Iran, seems ing national security. Last month, the country’s to confirm as much when he says he has never intelligence ministry warned Iranian academics encountered difficulties with the regime. “Just and scientists that contact with foreign institu- today, I signed letters for eight of our students tions, or attendance of international conferences, and faculty members to attend conferences in could result in their being considered spies. countries ranging from Japan, Russia to Europe Haleh Esfandiari, the 67-year-old director and the United States.” Reza Mansouri, a physi- of the Program at the Woodrow cist at Sharif University of Technology in , Wilson International Center for Scholars in and a deputy science minister under reformist Washington DC, and , a founder of former president Mohammad Khatami, is sim- the University of California’s Center for Citizen ilarly sanguine. He shrugs off the intelligence Peacebuilding, were arrested on 8 May. Kian ministry’s threat as a warning — aimed mainly Tajbakhsh, a researcher working on humanitar- at naive younger researchers — to be vigilant in ian issues with the Open Society Institute, based all dealings with the West. in New York, was arrested three days later. Mansouri says Iranian academics have long The three are being held in Tehran’s Evin been targeted by foreign intelligence services, Prison, long notorious for the torture of politi- and claims such efforts have increased recently. cal prisoners. Their incarceration has triggered “Intelligence agents have tried hard to contact protests from academic and human-rights Iranian scientists visiting research institutions organizations worldwide, including the Amer- abroad, or attending conferences,” he says, ican Association for the Advancement of Sci- “with the very obvious goal of having intelli- ence, Amnesty International, the gence information about Iran”. American Association of Univer- “How can we Some stories of such sity Professors, Human Rights effectuate covert approaches are “unfortunately Watch, and Scholars at Risk. or overt actions true,” agrees David Rahni, an Ira- The broader implications of nian-born chemist at Pace Uni- these developments have not been against a sovereign versity in New York. But Rahni is lost. The arrests “raise grave con- government, and less cool than physical scientists cerns about the ability of interna- expect them to take Nature spoke to in Iran about tionally recognized scholars and the impact of recent events. He intellectuals to safely visit Iran,” that sitting down?” says they will make colleagues in notes Scholars at Risk, an interna- Iran “think twice about commu- return to the anti-science, anti-academic years tional network of universities and colleges that nicating; it will have a negative impact on the that followed the inception of the current Ira- seeks to defend the human rights of academics country’s science”. nian theocracy in the 1979 revolution. She sees around the world. The organization thinks they For Haghighatjoo, the regime is rolling back it more as a tactical response to current inter- signal a “wider attempt to intimidate intellectu- years of slow progress on the opening up to national and domestic politics. als and to limit academic freedom in Iran.” the outside world undertaken by presidents President ’s gov- M. NIKOUBAZL/REUTERS The crackdown is already having a “chill- Rafsanjani and Khatami. Of 20 Iranians she ernment is increasingly unpopular at home, ing effect” on international collaboration, invited to a recent workshop on the future of risking defeat in next year’s parliamentary says Fatemeh Haghighatjoo, an Iranian psy- democracy in Iran at the Massachusetts Insti- elections and in the presidential elections of chologist and visiting fellow at Harvard’s John tute of Technology in Cambridge, only two 2009. The current repression, says Haghighat- F. Kennedy School of Government. She likens showed up, she says, with the others declining joo, is not like the purge of university liberals it to the repression of foreign contacts in the for fear of retribution or after the Iranian secu- that followed Ahmandinejad’s 2005 election. It Soviet Union at the height of the Cold War. rity services forbid them to attend. is simply that of a regime clinging on to power For the moment, researchers in the natural But, like other academics, Haghighatjoo dis- through “zero tolerance of any dissent” and is sciences seem to be less affected than their misses the idea that the crackdown represents a targeting any opposition, including that from

890 NATURE|Vol 447|21 June 2007 NEWS

TWIN BROTHERS MAKE WOMEN LESS FERTILE Testosterone sharing in the

womb has knock-on effects. BANANASTOCK www.nature.com/news Monkey stem cells cloned

CAIRNS Cloned embryonic stem cells have at last been generated from monkeys, a US research group claimed this week. The work was announced on 18 June in a last-minute presentation at the annual meeting of the International Society for Stem Cell Research in Cairns, Australia. These findings will renew hopes that similar cells can be produced for humans. “We’ve been waiting for this for some time,” said Alan Trounson of Monash University, Victoria, Australia, who introduced the presentation. The work was carried out by Shoukhrat Mitalipov of the Oregon National Primate Research Center in Portland and colleagues. They removed the chromosomes from unfertilized monkey eggs and replaced them with nuclei from the skin cells of an adult rhesus monkey (Macaca mulatta). A total of 278 oocytes yielded 21 blastocysts (hollow early embryos), from which the team eventually derived two embryonic stem- cell lines. The work has not yet been published. The failure of earlier attempts to clone embryonic stem cells in this way using monkeys had led several experienced researchers in the field to suggest that characteristics specific to primates might make it impossible (C. Simerly, et al. Science 300, 297; 2003). “Now we know primates are possible, like other mammal species,” says Norio Nakatsuji from Kyoto University, who has established primate stem- cell lines from uncloned embryos. One possibly crucial aspect of the new work is a gentler way of removing chromosomes from the egg by using imaging software rather than staining and ultraviolet light to guide the process. José Cibelli, a cloning expert at the , Ann Arbor, says there is no clear reason why techniques to make human Torture of Iran’s political prisoners is reportedly commonplace at Tehran’s notorious Evin Prison. embryonic stem cells through nuclear transfer need be very different from those used in non- conservatives, that threatens its grip. against a sovereign government, and expect human primates. But he cautions that “what And the United States has made no secret of them to take that crap sitting down?” says works in rhesus monkeys doesn’t work in the fact that it is spending millions to encour- Rahni. Esfandiari’s husband, Shaul Bakhash, baboons.” age some of the forms of dissent under attack, himself an academic expert on Iran, has also The Oregon group’s work has yet to be under the rubric of “pro-democracy support”. attacked the policy: “Loose talk of regime replicated in monkeys, but Renee Reijo Pera at Haghighatjoo, along with many academic and change and allocation of money supposed to Stanford University, California, plans to apply human-rights groups, sees this as both incom- advance democracy in Iran has done a great the techniques to other primates. He says that prehensible and counterproductive, playing deal of harm to Iranian academics, intellec- success in primates will renew the resolve to find into the hands of the regime by providing a tuals and researchers,” he told the Financial similar techniques for humans. ■ pretext to attack independent pro-democracy Times. “It also feeds the paranoia of the Ira- Monya Baker groups and academic reformers. nian regime of American intentions.” Monya Baker is news editor at Nature Reports “How can we as Americans spend millions Declan Butler Stem Cells. of dollars to effectuate covert or overt actions See Editorial, page 886. www.nature.com/stemcells/index.html

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