Yerevan State University; a Research Driven Institution by 2030

President Serge Sargsian chaired the sitting of the Council of the Yerevan State University on 25 December 2009. This was his last public gesture in 2009 in favor of higher education. Regardless of the controversy surrounding Serge Sargsian’s legitimacy as President of Republic, I consider such gestures, overall, positive if they are eventually followed by serious actions and reforms.

According to A1+ news agency in his opening remarks he declared that "this year was significant, since we celebrated the 90th anniversary our University. I say ‘our’ because Yerevan State University is the pride of the whole nation. During the 90 years of its existence it has given hundreds of thousands of graduates. The alumnae of the University have been the founders of new branches of science both in the Republic of Armenia and the Soviet Socialist Republic of Armenia."

President/Rector of the University Mr. Aram Simonian presented the YSU annual report. The YSU Academic Council was attended by 60 members, including Minister of Education and Science Mr. Armen Ashotian, Minister of Diaspora Ms. Hranoush Hakobian, Minister of Territorial Administration Mr. Armen Grigorian, Ombudsman Mr. Armen Haroutiunian, and President of the National Academy of Sciences Mr. Radik Martirosian. The members of the YSU Council approved the proposed Strategic Development Plan 2010-2014.

At the end of the sitting the Mr. Simonian announced that the YSU intends to become a research driven university in 20 years time. He added that “… to reach this objective we need to turn results of our research works into products and offer them in the market.” He then emphasized the need for improved laboratory equipment.

Iranian Student Protester is Times 'Person of the Year'

The Times of London dated 26 December announced that it had selected Ms. Neda Soltan as the person of the year. A young student of Philosophy, she was shot during a pro-reform and pro-democracy protest, following the disputed elections of 12 June in Iran. She quickly became an opposition symbol.

Reportedly, Neda Soltan was not political, she had not even participated in the elections and had not voted but was appalled by the rigging of the result and the re-installment of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

According to The Times, the young student ignored the pleas of her family and went with her music teacher eight days after the elections to join an opposition demonstration in Tehran.

“Even if a bullet goes through my heart it’s not important,” she told her fiancé. “What we’re fighting for is more important. When it comes to taking our stolen rights back we should not hesitate. Everyone is responsible. Each person leaves a footprint in this world.”

Ms. Soltan, 26, had no idea just how big a footprint she would leave. Hours after leaving home, she was indeed shot, by a government sniper, as she and other demonstrators chanted: “Death to the dictator.”

A 40-second telephone clip of Ms. Soltan’s final moments flashed around the world. Overnight she became a global symbol of the theocratic regime’s brutality, and of the remarkable courage of Iran’s opposition in a region where other populations are all too easily suppressed by despotic governments.

Her name was invoked by Barack Obama, Gordon Brown and other world leaders. Outside Iranian embassies huge crowds of protesters staged candlelit vigils, held up her picture, or wore T-shirts proclaiming, “NEDA — Nothing Except Democracy Acceptable”. The internet was flooded with tributes, poems and songs.

She was no less of an icon inside Iran, whose Shia population is steeped in the mythology of martyrdom. Vigils were held. Her grave became something of a shrine, and the 40th day after her death — an important date in Shia mourning rituals — was marked by a big demonstration in Tehran’s cemetery that riot police broke up.

The Times finds parallels between Ms. Soltan and the young man who confronted China’s tanks during the Tiananmen Square demonstrations 20 years earlier. The paper notes that Neda Soltan was young and pretty, innocent, brave and modern. She wore make-up beneath her mandatory headscarf, jeans and trainers beneath her long, black coat, and liked to travel. She transcended the narrow confines of religion, nationality and ideology. She evoked almost universal empathy.

The story of her death was so potent that the regime went to extraordinary lengths to suppress it. It banned a mourning ceremony, tore down black banners outside her home, and insisted that her funeral be private. It ordered her family to stay silent.

In the subsequent weeks any number of leading officials, ayatollahs included, sought to blame her death on British and American intelligence agencies, the opposition, and even the BBC — accusing its soon-to-be expelled Tehran correspondent, Jon Leyne, of arranging her death so that he could get good pictures.

The regime announced investigations that, to no one’s surprise, exonerated it and all its agents. The regime even tried to buy off Ms. Soltan’s parents by promising them a pension if they agreed that their daughter was a “martyr” killed by foreign agents.

Six months on, it is obvious that Ms. Soltan did not die in vain. She helped to inspire an opposition movement that is now led by her generation, which a systematic campaign of arrests, show trials, beatings, torture and security force violence has failed to crush, and whose courage and defiance has won the admiration of the world.

To read The Times article in full, please click here.