My academic life began at Tehran University, but the hierarchical and restrictive educational system there became quickly irritating for me. It was during this time that a close friend introduced me to the Institute for Social Sciences and Humanities (ISSH). Immediately, I recognized it as the progressive alternative I needed. I was deeply drawn to the program because it hosted many of the Iranian intellectuals whose pioneering ideas I already followed. Without hesitation, I applied.

The Foundation of Integrity and Excellence

The ISSH gave me the platform to pursue a challenging and vital piece of research: my Master’s thesis on “Daula and ’Umran: The Political and Economic Origins of Environmental and Geographical Determinism in Ibn Khaldun’s Thought.” Under the dedicated supervision of Dr. Mohammad Reza Nikfar, this experience was defined by intellectual rigor and professional support from the entire administrative team. My work did not just survive; it thrived. The thesis received the highest grade (95 out of 100) and earned the distinction of Cum Laude, marking the beginning of my true academic trajectory.

The Catalyst for International Success

The success at ISSH was not an end, but a powerful catalyst. Backed by the rigorous review of my committee referees, Dr. Ali Banuazizi and Dr. Nayereh Tohidi, my thesis quickly transitioned to the international stage. It was presented at academic conferences and it is currently slated for publication by Iran Academia University Press.

Crucially, this foundation allowed me to successfully relocate to the Netherlands, where I secured a Research Fellowship at the International Institute of Social History (IISH), and later, earned a full scholarship to pursue my MA in Gender Studies at Utrecht University.

Our Shared Responsibility

The ISSH has been the touchstone of my academic life—a precious space where I was empowered to hope, resist, and forge meaningful intellectual friendships. I will never forget the immense support I received, particularly from and , and I will always be under their debt. I know my story is one of many. Countless Iranian students have found their voice and academic future through the ISSH. Supporting the ISSH is not charity; it is a critical investment in intellectual freedom and a commitment to ensuring that the next generation of Iranian students and scholars can truly flourish.

In open societies, we often take the syllabus for granted. We view a university classroom as a given space for debate, where ideas clash, evolve, and refine one another. But in Iran, and many authoritarian contexts, education exists under a heavy, pervasive weight: the shadow of censorship.

It is not just about redacted books. It is about the “internalized guardrails”, the questions a student is afraid to ask, the topics a professor knows to skip, and the constant, low-level anxiety that intellectual curiosity might be interpreted as a political crime.

At ISSH Graduate School (Academia) our mission has always been to provide an alternative: a digital geography where that shadow does not exist. But describing “freedom” is abstract until you hear it from someone who has crossed that border.

We recently received a testimonial from an alumnus of the ISSH Graduate School that stopped us in our tracks. It vividly captures the transition from a monitored education to a liberated one.

“A Space Built on Dialogue”

Here is the full story from Hadi Miri Ashtiani, shared in his own words:

“Before joining ISSH Graduate School (Academia), I had known about it for years. It was always something I intended to pursue someday. But life, work, and other academic obligations kept pushing that plan further into the future. When I finally enrolled, the experience turned out to be unlike anything I had previously encountered in academic spaces. It not only challenged what I thought a university could be, but also reshaped how I understand knowledge, power, and the role of critical thinking.

Perhaps the most striking difference was the freedom. At ISSH Graduate School, I encountered an uncensored and open engagement with the social sciences and humanities, something virtually impossible inside Iran. There, censorship touches everything: research topics, syllabi, classroom conversations, even the tone of academic writing. It is always present, sometimes blatant, sometimes internalized, sometimes imposed, sometimes simply feared. But always there.

In contrast, ISSH Graduate School offered something rare: a space built on dialogue, intellectual honesty, and critical inquiry. That’s not to say critical thought doesn’t exist in Iran, on the contrary, there are bold scholars, unwavering intellectuals and activists, powerful texts, courageous initiatives. But all of it exists under the shadow of censorship. ISSH Graduate School showed me what happens when that shadow is lifted.“

—Hadi Miri Ashtiani

The People Behind the Infrastructure

What strikes us most about this reflection isn’t just the relief of escaping censorship; it is the recognition of the human labor required to maintain a free space.

Institutions are often faceless, but a charity like ours is built on the backs of specific, dedicated individuals. The student continues:

“Another defining part of my experience was the people. The sincerity and dedication of those behind ISSH Graduate School was unlike anything I’d seen. stands out as one of the most committed individuals I’ve encountered, always available, always listening, always doing the quiet, difficult work that keeps everything running. You often find yourself wondering: how does he carry so much care? is just the same, constantly envisioning new directions, new possibilities, always building. And the entire team embodies this spirit: welcoming, responsive, and unburdened by institutional ego. ISSH Graduate School feels like a community, not a bureaucracy.”

—Hadi Miri Ashtiani

A Democratic Academic Space

True education requires more than just books; it requires a culture of mutual respect. Hadi, highlighted the specific faculty members who make this culture a reality:

“The faculty, Nayereh Tohidi, Saeed Paivandi, Mohammad Reza Nikfar, Zeynab Peyghambarzadeh, Kazem Alamdari, and others offered a vision of academia grounded in mutual respect and collaboration. In place of hierarchy, there was dialogue. In place of distance, curiosity. Their approach to teaching reflected a different way of being an academic, one that is not only more human, but more intellectually honest.

ISSH Graduate School (Academia) also brought together people from remarkably diverse backgrounds to learn, teach, question, and collaborate. It was a democratic academic space in the truest sense: independent, inclusive, supportive of research in one’s mother tongue, and genuinely committed to free and accessible education...

For me, being part of Academia was an invaluable opportunity. I found a space where learning felt real, where conversations mattered, and where community wasn’t just a word but a practice.”

—Hadi Miri Ashtiani

Help Us Do “The Quiet, Difficult Work”

Hadi Miri Ashtiani’s testimonial reminds us that intellectual independence isn’t a luxury; for many, it is oxygen.

When you support ISSH (Trust.Education), you aren’t just funding a website or a course. You are supporting the “quiet, difficult work” that Ali, Sajad, Asefeh, Hani, Dara, Golsa, Elly, Zeynab and many more and our faculty do every day. You are ensuring that when a student logs on from a place where thoughts are policed, they find a community where the shadow is lifted and the lights are on.

We are a charity, and a 501(c)3 foundation, and we rely on the support of those who believe that critical thinking is a cornerstone of a free society.

If this student’s journey resonates with you, please consider becoming a sustaining partner of our work. Your contribution ensures that the next student who is waiting to start the next cohort of the graduate school finds the doors open, the syllabus uncensored, and the community waiting.

I would like to dedicate this piece, first of all, to Mr. Ali Reza Kazemi, the Managing Director of ISSH, whose leadership made this path possible. I am equally indebted to all the professors and instructors whose labour sustains this vital academic space. In particular, I want to express my profound gratitude to Dr. Mohammad Reza Nikfar, Dr. Saeed Peivandi, and Dr. Zeynab Peyghambarzadeh, whose teaching, mentorship, and intellectual generosity profoundly shaped my academic journey and my understanding of emancipation.

—Amin Moussavi Nezhad
PhD Student in Political Science at the University of Alberta

When I reflect on the trajectory of my life — from arrest in the midst of the Woman, Life, Freedom movement, to release on bail, to this moment as a PhD student in Political Science at the University of Alberta — I realize that what sustained me was not merely hope, but an experience of emancipation. Not the abstract emancipation often invoked in theory, but a concrete, tangible emancipation: intellectual, existential, and deeply personal.

My interest in social sciences was never just academic curiosity. It was a desire, perhaps even a need, to understand power, injustice, and liberation. But for me, pursuing that path in Iran was effectively closed. When I was detained, and later released under surveillance, I thought the door had slammed shut forever. It felt like my academic dream had been crushed under the heavy weight of repression and fear.

Yet at that very rupture, the Institute for Social Sciences and Humanities (ISSH) entered my life. Its free Master’s program in Social Studies was not just a program; it was a lifeline. It was a signal; that even in confinement, knowledge can flow; that even when a regime tries to silence us, we can still learn, think, and imagine otherwise.

Emancipation as Intellectual Freedom

In my research, I draw on the critical theory notion of emancipation in two senses. First, as the liberation of the self from dominating social structures; second, as the expansion of one’s capacity to act meaningfully in the world. The ISSH program embodied both.

Academia in authoritarian contexts often means self-censorship, silence, and fear. But the ISSH program offered courses that were uncensored, critical, and fearless. It challenged us to think about power, identity, inequality; not as abstract, academic problems, but as lived, urgent realities. For someone like me, who had just tasted repression, this was more than theory; it was therapeutic, empowering, and subversive.

Through readings, discussions, and writing, I found that emancipation was not only a conceptual ideal — it was a claim I could stake for myself. I could refuse to be defined by the identity imposed on me by the state. I could reclaim my subjectivity, my dignity, my voice.

Emancipation as Existential and Psychological Survival

Beyond intellectual freedom, the ISSH program offered what I lacked most after my arrest: a sense of belonging and purpose. Detained persons are often reduced to numbers, to “cases,” to problems. Survivors are often haunted by shame, fear, and isolation. For me, ISSH was a space of restoration.

I reconnected with a world of ideas, of solidarity, of possibility. I met peers who understood what it meant to struggle, to risk, to hope. Each essay I wrote, each discussion I joined, was a small act of defiance; against despair, against erasure, against the silence the regime wanted to impose.

In that program, emancipation meant survival. Not just bodily survival, but the survival of my inner life: my sense of dignity, my right to think, to critique, to dream.

From Emancipated Thought to Transformative Action

Completing the ISSH Master’s was transformative. It awakened in me not only academic ambition, but also a moral and political vocation. It was the bridge that allowed me to imagine a future beyond confinement and statelessness.

Because ISSH kept the flame of critical social thought alive in me, I could survive the transition, the migration, the losses. More than that: I could carry with me a commitment: that knowledge should remain uncensored, accessible, free, especially for those deprived of it.

Now, as a PhD student, I study political structures, power relations, and the meaning of emancipation itself. But I also carry within me an embodied memory of what it is to be silenced, and what it is to be heard again. That tension shapes my scholarship, guides my questions, and fuels my determination to produce knowledge that is not just academically rigorous, but socially meaningful, morally resonant, and politically emancipatory.

Why Such Stories Matter — For Academia and Emancipation

Personal testimonies like mine are not just stories. They are proof that emancipation is not merely theoretical. It is a living possibility. When an institution like ISSH provides free, uncensored education to those excluded from it, it demonstrates that emancipation is not a privilege — it can be a right.

In contexts where power seeks to dominate not only bodies but minds, where regimes police thoughts as much as actions; free, online, uncensored education becomes resistance. It becomes survival. It becomes the planting of a seed that may one day grow into a forest of critical thinkers, dissenters, activists, builders of more just societies.

My journey did not end with hope. It did not end with triumph. It continues as emancipation: an ongoing process of thinking, acting, resisting, and rebuilding.

Hope is a dangerous emotion. It has hurt me -so much- to hope and be disappointed; so, I try not to hope.

We live in systems that tend to marginalize good and amplify evil; crisis after crisis unfold before our eyes, and as the supposedly most powerful species to live on this Earth, with innovations that have transformed everything in this world, we still seem incapable of transforming the very systems we have created.

Effort and outcome are not proportionate in this world. It takes SO much energy to achieve the smallest amount of good, which can then slip away -revert back- so easily in the blink of an eye.

There is a Persian saying, “To want something is to be able to do it”; it’s meant to emphasize the power of will. I find it to be -frankly- bullshit! It completely ignores all structures of power that shape our lives; I find it disrespectful to the millions who have wanted and not been able to.

All this is to clarify my position on grand solutions: I do not believe in them. I’ve come to accept that we might not be powerful enough, even in our greatest numbers, to make things sustainably better. I do not believe in an imminent triumph, but I’ve also learned that victory is not the most important thing: resistance is.

Resistance is refusing to abandon the turf despite knowing you might very well lose.

Resistance is holding your head up high as you watch them crush your goals.

Resistance is not giving up your seat even though the table is being destroyed.

Resistance is prioritizing your values in a valueless world.

Resistance is knowing that 2 + 2 = 4.

Resistance is holding on to a vision of good, of utopia, of a better tomorrow. You don’t have to hope it will be realized, you don’t have to believe it’s feasible, you just have to know that there is another way, because no matter how hopeless we are, there is only one sure way to guarantee that a better tomorrow will never arrive: and that is not knowing it could.

What has this gotten to do with ISSH?

ISSH is the epitome of resistance.

It is created by people who embody resistance: refusing to be silenced or marginalized and creating a way for knowledge to flow across the borders of oppression and for alternative voices to be amplified.

It features people who embody resistance: coming together from around the world to declare a commitment to knowledge, freedom, and possibilities of better tomorrows.

It is also the embodiment of what resistance could achieve: an institution born from an unorthodox vision challenging the rules and structures of this world, and yet enduring and expanding for 12 years, producing and disseminating knowledge in service of the community.

Resistance is power because it is non-sensical and irrational. Homo economicus would not stare in the face of oppression and keep building a house that is constantly destroyed.

Resistance is power because it confuses the powerful: if you keep doing what you do despite their best efforts to shut you down, you must be very strong, dangerously strong: because it takes extraordinary strength to hold your empty fist up in the air for a long time, more than it would to lift a heavy weight for a short while.

That’s how ISSH, an educational institution small in its size and stretched in its resources (two things that have never held it back from pulling off mighty projects), is deemed powerful enough by a militarized authoritarian regime to be an agent of a “soft overthrow” plot.

Resistance can muster up enough strength to scare the most powerful, and ISSH exemplifies this in the best possible way.

So, resistance is impactful regardless of the outcome. It is its persistence that contributes to its impact, and I want to ask you to support ISSH and its persisting resistance.

I’ve tried to appeal to the hopeless of the world in this rant because I know what it feels like to crawl back into the personal sphere as the social one seems daunting, I know the ache of not being powerful enough to make things better, but we are still powerful enough to hold down small forts in some corners of the world, making sure our vision is protected, so that if there ever exists a space for it to be realized, it is remembered.

If you don’t think a better day will come, that is ok. If you are not sure we can ever win, I share your doubt. But let us protect the possibility, let us breathe life into this glorious project of resistance, let us make sure ISSH is preserved as a space for dreamers, let us resist the erasure of alternative ways.

This is personal to me, and I call on you to stand with us. What that means is:

- Donating if you can, and/or

- Sharing our messages,

- Introducing ISSH to others (or first better familiarizing yourself with it by reading about its history), and

- Inviting philanthropists (and potential philanthropists, aka any rich people around you) to consider donating to our cause.

I know we may not win,

But let us resist,

And join our resistance!