Student Movement and Political Othering; How Did Students in the Final Decade of the Second Pahlavi Dynasty Use the Polarization of the University Environment as a Tool to Fight the Regime?

Abstract
Drawing the border between friend and enemy, insider and outsider is one of the mechanisms for building collective identities and group and national cohesion. In many cases, this is the sovereign of a political order that has the possibility and authority to draw such boundaries with a self-founded decision. In a revolutionary situation, the protesting people do not consider such legitimacy for the sovereign and seek to draw a border that considers him as “them” and the people as “us”. Therefore, in the years leading up to the revolution, a bipolar atmosphere always dominates the society, which forms an important part of the political culture of the protesters. This article, by using the theories of Carl Schmidt and documentary method and studying researches, interviews and related documents, seeks to answer the question of how the students of Tehran during the reign of Pahlavi II fueled political otherizing and how they organized the university environment based on the political dichotomies between students and the established political regime. The findings show that the translation of union affairs into political affairs had an effective role in building, stabilizing and reproducing this bipolarity. The blurring of the boundaries of trade union and political matter caused ambiguity of the cause of protest and dissatisfaction, and this ambiguity aggravated the politicization of the university environment. Due to this kind of intensification of conflicts and political tensions, any action that showed the slightest connection with the established regime or the officials was interpreted as compromise or betrayal. 
Keywords: Student Movement, Polarization, Political Antagonism, Islamic Revolution, Union Demand.
 
1. Introduction
One of the indicators by which the level of political development of a society can be measured is the quality of the relationship between the state and the nation. In a situation where intermediary institutions have facilitated dialogue between society and the state, interested groups will be able to pursue their demands through civil and trade union channels. But in the absence of such institutions, governance falls into the abyss of inefficiency; the state and the nation become alienated from each other, and governments see no need to engage in dialogue with society and interested groups.
One of the groups that were both a product of the implementation of development programs in the country and had a negative stance towards the way these programs were implemented was university students. After Shahrivar 1941, the university has always been the scene of overt and covert political protests, and students at different stages expressed this protest in different forms. The 1940s and 1950s are a special period in Iran’s contemporary history, and the Cold War between the two power blocs led to the world being interpreted in the form of a bipolar model in which the forces of good and evil were aligned against each other. Student protests were no exception to this general rule, and the political culture that dominates the university space has played an important role in determining methods of struggle, identifying insider and outsider groups, explaining the causes of dissatisfaction with the established political regime and the performance of the rulers. Accordingly, this article seeks to examine how students’ sense of alienation from the political system manifested itself in their daily lives and struggles, what assumptions students used to fuel this alienation, and how they expressed their dissatisfaction with the gap and distance they had with the government.
 
2. Materials and Methods
The second Pahlavi dynasty was a period of prevalence and dominance of ideologies that, by presenting political and religious meta-narratives, promised a new future that would be achieved through a revolutionary transition from the status quo. Universities were also one of the important centers of political activity in those years. Since the university’s political activity was a function of the political atmosphere of parties and groups outside the university, protesting and revolutionary students played a greater role in controlling the university’s public space. Their antagonistic attitude towards politics also led the university’s political atmosphere to construct a bipolar space.
This attitude assumed the certainty of the boundary between right and wrong and the inviolability of the criteria by which friends and enemies were determined. Therefore, one of the important components that accelerated the process of students becoming politicized was the division of the political space into two poles of good and evil, or right and wrong.
This bipolar atmosphere has played a decisive role in the politicization of individuals, groups, and parties. In such a situation, condemning the opposing front does not require analysis and examination of the situation, and each group simply has to be ready to condemn it as soon as the opponent takes a position. This bipolar situation extends the political to the most detailed and trivial matters, and at the same time, it makes systematic and rational reflection on the political irrelevant.
At the university, professors and critical students saw political virtue in distancing themselves from the political system of the time. But this politicized atmosphere also led to constant demarcations between professors and students themselves. It seems that both groups wanted to enjoy the benefits of teaching or studying at the university while at the same time maintaining their distance from the existing political system.
 
3. Discussion
The lack of a proper understanding of the connection between one’s identity and the other leads to the perception of an unbridgeable distance between the two, as if the life and existence of one is dependent on the death and destruction of the other, while both need the other to maintain their existence. The political culture of protest that prevailed in universities in the last two decades of the second Pahlavi dynasty was influenced by such an atmosphere. Accordingly, any decision or action was considered a conspiracy simply because it was attributed to the ruling political system. This opposition had become the dominant form of student relations with each other and with professors, without necessarily having any specific concrete content.
Interpreting events through political polarities caused union affairs to take on a political flavor, and students turned to political stances to resolve union issues.
Translating union demands into political protest would have made the politicization of students a fluid and formless process in which no action could quell their dissatisfaction and anger. Although the initial source of the protest was union issues, translating this dissatisfaction into political protest would have obliterated the initial motivation for the protest. In such a situation, political protest becomes a hysterical desire that lacks a final object and no end can be imagined for new political demands. 
Political subjects always want something other than what they demand, and achieving their desires not only does not satisfy them, but it also increases their dissatisfaction and makes them think of a new plan for a new demand. The hysterical use of political language, by intensifying the conflict of interests, makes students’ intervention in various matters seem more justified.
 
4. Conclusion
This article sought to understand one of the dimensions of the political culture of protesting and revolutionary students in Tehran during the second Pahlavi era. Relying on various methods of political othering and establishing and reproducing an antagonistic relationship between students and the established political regime was one of the most important ways in which students fueled and perpetuated their protests. The protesting students considered any form of interaction and relationship with university officials a negative point in their record and tried in every way to absolve themselves of such accusations. On the other hand, any form of functioning of the university system was interpreted as an attempt to reconstruct and reproduce the authoritarian system, and university officials were considered agents and henchmen of the Pahlavi regime. This intensified radicalism in the student atmosphere; a radicalism that made it impossible to draw a line between the university’s general functions and political repression, fueling public opposition to the programs and actions of university officials, and as a result, political opposition and protest became a constant and ubiquitous phenomenon.
This form of insistence on protest made opposition to the status quo an end in itself, and for this reason the goal of the protest was to maintain or exacerbate problems in order to continue the protest. Othering, with the aim of insisting on an irreconcilable antagonistic relationship that recognizes no path to compromise or agreement, leads to the development of a political subculture that considers the only form of conflict in the political arena to be an attempt to eliminate the other from the field. What is neglected in such circumstances is addressing the question of whether all existing shortcomings and deficiencies should be considered antagonistic problems or whether some of the dissatisfaction can be resolved within the existing framework.