Back to Campus, Back to Protest: A New Student Wave After the January Uprising
As campuses reopened, students launched sit-ins, memorial assemblies, and anti-regime chants—met by Basij-led disruption, arrests, mass summons, and a rapid push to move classes online.
The new wave of student protests began on Saturday 2 Esfand 1404 (21 February 2026), the first day of in-person reopening after long closures linked to the bloody January uprising. From the outset, student gatherings framed the reopening not as a return to “normal,” but as a collective commemoration—of students killed in the January uprising and, more broadly, of those massacred by the Islamic Republic.
By Wednesday 6 Esfand 1404 (25 February 2026), the protests had entered their fifth day, spreading across Tehran and multiple cities. Sit-ins (tahasson), rallies, and memorial ceremonies continued even as universities tightened entry controls, summoned and detained students, and shifted teaching online—moves widely read on campuses as security measures rather than academic decisions.
Slogans and Political Repertoires
Across universities, students repeatedly combined memorial rituals with openly confrontational, anti-authoritarian slogans. Common chants included:
* “Death to the dictator”
* “Political prisoners must be freed”
* “Poverty, corruption, high prices—we’ll fight until overthrow”
* “Until the cleric is shrouded, this homeland won’t be a homeland”
* “This year is the year of blood—Sayyed Ali will be overthrown”
* “We didn’t give martyrs to compromise…”
* “One is killed, a thousand rise behind them”
* “Woman, Life, Freedom”
Students also articulated a clear rejection of rival authoritarian projects and factional monopolies. In Tehran University’s Social Sciences faculty, chants included “Woman, Life, Freedom—an Iranian republic,” alongside “Neither monarchy, nor leadership, nor Rajavi reaction,” signaling both anti-theocratic and anti-restorationist positioning inside the same assemblies. At some campuses, however, reports also noted that supporters of Reza Pahlavi raised pro-monarchist slogans—an indication of the contested political field within and around student mobilization.
The protests were not only vocal but performative. Students held silent sit-ins, read out the names of those killed in the January uprising, and sang widely recognized patriotic songs such as “Oh Iran.” In several universities—including Alzahra and Amirkabir in Tehran—students reportedly set fire to the Islamic Republic’s flag. In Alzahra, there were also reports of “sandoos” [what is sandoos?] being thrown toward Basij members during clashes, turning a symbol of state patronage into an object of ridicule.
Assemblies, Sit-ins, and Memorial Ceremonies
A defining feature of this wave was the way assemblies merged mourning with political refusal.
At the University of Tehran, memorial events were held for named victims, including Raha Behloulipour (a student of Italian literature) on Monday 4 Esfand 1404 (23 February 2026). Participants chanted “Woman, Life, Freedom,” “Death to the dictator,” and “This flower has been torn apart—its gift has become the homeland,” linking personal loss to a collective narrative of national sacrifice. In another Tehran University ceremony—held for Mohammadreza Moradali—students reportedly prevented Basij attempts to appropriate the memorial and recast him as a pro-regime figure, pushing back with chants and collective control of the space.
At Shahid Beheshti University, students in Nursing, Pharmacy, and Midwifery staged a silent sit-in that later turned into collective chanting and protest singing. At Ferdowsi University of Mashhad, students held a sit-in in the Engineering faculty and sang “Ey Iran” explicitly in memory of those killed in the January uprising.
At Kharazmi University, the trigger on Wednesday 6 Esfand 1404 (25 February 2026) was the announcement of online classes before teaching had properly begun—students responded with a sit-in and chants such as “We stand to the end, sworn by the blood of our comrades,” “If it goes online, our chants will get harsher,” and “Freedom, freedom, freedom.” They also commemorated Saghar Seyfollahi, a graduate, by name—showing how this wave continually braided political demands with remembrance.
Basij Disruption, Security Pressure, and Campus Closures
Repression in this wave was marked not only by state security forces but by systematic intervention from student Basij and university security (harasat).
At the University of Tehran, security reportedly intensified gate checks and controlled movement across the central campus on Wednesday 6 Esfand 1404 (25 February 2026). At Ferdowsi University, Basij forces reportedly tried to disrupt the gathering and were met with booing and the chant: “Liar Basiji—where is your student card?”—a slogan that targets Basij legitimacy inside the university by challenging their claim to student status.
In other campuses, the response escalated further. Reports described Basij members using tear gas or pepper spray in some universities, with injuries also reported: in Khajeh Nasir University of Technology, one student’s head was reportedly seriously injured during violent Basij actions, and attacks were also reported at Iran University of Science and Technology.
At Shiraz University, the preventive logic was stark: entrances were reportedly blocked, officials declared the university “closed,” and heavy deployment—including dozens of motorbikes and multiple patrol vehicles—was reported around the campus perimeter. Students attempting to gather off-campus (including at a library near Namazi Square) reportedly faced closures and dispersal tactics.
There were also reports of plainclothes forces entering campuses by bus, including Beheshti and Iran University of Science and Technology—suggesting planning and coordination beyond routine campus security.
Arrests, Summons, and Administrative Punishments
Alongside street-level intimidation, the state relied heavily on disciplinary and administrative coercion.
At Iran University of Art, three students—Pouyan Jomeili, Sina Ghanimati, and Kiarash Najafzadeh—were reportedly detained by plainclothes forces during a protest where chants included “Death to the dictator” and “Political prisoners must be freed,” and where students demanded the release of detainees by name, including “Mahyar Hajimohammadi must be freed.”
In Tehran, reports indicated dozens of summons to disciplinary committees: more than 45 University of Tehran students were reportedly summoned in one recent stretch, with claims that students were pressured to sign “pledges” without evidence. Elsewhere, a larger figure was cited by the newspaper Shargh: at least 180 Tehran students summoned via text in three days, and more than 60 reportedly barred from campus through phone calls alone.
Bans on entry, loss of access to education platforms, and intensified surveillance were also reported—at Alzahra, for example, entry controls were reportedly tightened via gates equipped with facial recognition, alongside case-by-case checks through student systems.
Threat campaigns extended beyond campus, reaching families. At Yazd University, sources reported a wave of threatening calls—often from “private numbers”—targeting at least 276 students, frequently contacting parents and alleging participation in protests or damage to public property. One account described a student’s father being hospitalized with a heart condition after such a call.
Separately, a student activist case drew attention in Mamasani: Alireza Rezaei (a law student at Islamic Azad University, Nourabad Mamasani) was reportedly arrested at home on Monday 4 Esfand 1404 (23 February 2026) with his two brothers, followed by the reported arrest of his father after visiting the local Intelligence Office on Tuesday 5 Esfand 1404 (24 February 2026).
Online Classes as a Security Response
As protests spread, many universities pivoted toward online instruction “until the end of the year”—a move widely interpreted by students as an attempt to drain campuses of crowds and assemblies.
Islamic Azad University announced that theoretical courses would be held online from Saturday 9 Esfand 1404 (28 February 2026) until the end of 1404 (20 March 2026), officially citing Ramadan and scheduling issues, while postponing practical and lab courses to 15 Farvardin 1405 (4 April 2026). State universities including Kurdistan and Zanjan also announced online teaching for undergraduate programs through the end of the year, while Kharazmi University issued a similar notice for both its Tehran and Karaj campuses.
On the ground, these announcements repeatedly intersected with protest dynamics—students at Kharazmi, for example, staged a sit-in precisely because the online shift was announced before classes had even begun.
Official Reframing and the Battle Over the Dead
The protests are inseparable from the unresolved question of the January uprising’s death toll—and from the state’s effort to control the meaning of those deaths.
On Sunday 19 Bahman 1404 (8 February 2026), Masoud Habibi, the Deputy for Cultural and Student Affairs at the Ministry of Health, acknowledged for the first time that “close to 100” students were killed during the January uprising protests, while framing many victims as “martyrs” based on the Supreme Leader’s view and emphasizing claims of “foreign” or “terrorist” involvement.
Human rights groups reported vastly higher figures. HRANA, the Human Rights Activists News Agency, stated that by Saturday 18 Bahman 1404 (7 February 2026), at least 6,961 people had been killed in the January uprising protests, and that the number of detainees had reached 51,465, including 112 students—while also noting thousands of cases still under review. Alongside the numbers, families reportedly described intense pressure to alter the narrative of death—being pushed to label slain relatives not as protesters but as Basij members or regime-linked “martyrs,” sometimes under threats tied to the return of bodies or permission for funerals.
This is the backdrop against which students’ memorial readings, name lists, and chants insist: the dead will not be administratively rewritten.
What This Wave Signals
This protest wave has made the reopening of universities itself into a confrontation: campuses as public squares, classrooms as sites of mourning and refusal. Students have expanded their repertoire—from silent sit-ins to flag burnings, from chanting to singing, from memorial ceremonies to direct challenges against Basij legitimacy—while the state responds through a combined strategy of Basij intimidation, security deployments, arrests, mass summons, bans, and online “depopulation” of campuses.
What emerges is not a single campus story but a national pattern: the university as a renewed center of anti-regime politics, precisely at the moment the state attempted to restore “normality” after the January uprising.
Back to Campus, Back to Protest: A New Student Wave After the January Uprising #StudentProtests #BackToCampus
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