Iranian Student Opposition to the
Shah 
Afshin
Matin-Asgari
This book is the first
comprehensive history of Iran's student movement from its origin to the 1970s. The main narrative draws almost exclusively on
primary sources to give a full historical account of the Confederation of Iranian
Students/National Union (CISNU), the largest and most influential opposition organization
active throughout the two decades before the 1978-79 revolution. The CISNU story, however, is framed in the general
background of Iran's student and leftist movement both at home and abroad. Thus the book has a second narrative that
partially covers another previously unstudied topic. Beyond its intrinsic
significance as a missing chapter in twentieth-century Iranian history, this work will
help to revise current understandings of the revolution, as it documents the central role
of students in the pre-revolutionary opposition. It
thus differs from the majority of works on modern Iran in the originality of its subject
matter, extensive use of new primary sources, and the revisionist implications of its
findings.
The book will be of interest to Iran and Middle East experts, as well as to students of
comparative politics, political culture, nationalism, and radical movements in general. It should also appeal to a wider nonacademic
readership interested in contemporary history, current events, the Middle East and Iran
(including a large Iranian population in the US, thousands of whom are familiar, or former
affiliates, with the country's student movement.
"This is a rich and
highly original political history of Iran's student movement and its organizations,
principally CISNU and ISAUS. Matin-asgari's study enhances our understanding of the
political processes leading up to the Iranian Revolution, and elucidates the important
international role of the Iranian student movement in Europe and the United States. The
book will be indispensable to theorists of social movements and to historians of modern
Iran."
-Val Moghadam
"This book is rich
with primary sources and deals with an important subject overlooked by most scholars. It
is a highly readable work and adds greatly to our understanding of the l979
revolution."
-Ervand Abrahamian
Specifications:
2001: x+284pp., plates, appendix, bibliography, index.
ISBN:1-56859-079-2(paper): $28.00
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