AN AUGURY OF REVOLUTION: THE IRANIAN STUDENT ...

Justice William O. Douglas. Douglas was a First Amendment absolutist and a prolific foreign
traveler who was knowledgeable of Iran and the shah’s brutal dictatorship. 178 Douglas knew
much about Iran because of his extensive travels around the world. He wrote in his memoir that
“The game of the Shah was obvious – to try to still the mounting opposition against him at home
and control Iranians abroad by executing dissenters.” 179 Douglas urged Kennedy not to authorize
the deportation unless the FBI could prove that the students were communists. A few weeks
later after the FBI investigation concluded, Douglas received a “jubilant call” from Robert
Kennedy to let him know none of the thirty students were communists and that “he told Rusk to
go jump in the lake.” 180
According to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, there were approximately 40,000 Iranians
attending institutions of higher education in 1963. There were 14,000 students at Tehran
University and another 6,000 attending other Iranian universities. There were approximately
15,000 to 20,000 Iranians studying abroad, with more than 5,000 Iranian students studying in the
United States. By 1963, the United States surpassed West Germany as the host of the most
Iranian students abroad, however, West Germany remained a close second with 4,000. 181
178 To read about William O. Douglas’ trips to and opinions concerning Iran, see William O. Douglas, The Court
Years, 1939-1975: The Autobiography of William O. Douglas (New York: Random House, 1980), 303-4, 307-8;
The Douglas Letters: Selections from the Private Papers of Justice William O. Douglas. ed. Melvin I. Urofsky with
the assistance of Philip E. Urofsky (Bethesda, Maryland: Adler and Adler, 1987), 279-88; William O. Douglas,
Strange Lands and Friendly People (New York: Harper, 1951).
179 Douglas, The Court Years, 1939-1975, 308.
180 Douglas, The Court Years, 1939-1975, 308; There is also an account of this event in Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr.,
Robert Kennedy and His Times (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1978), 355-6.
181 “The Iranian Intellectual Community,” DNSA, 21 December 1963; Talbot to Rusk, “Agitational Activities of
Anti-Shah Iranian Students in the United States,” 5 October 1963, FRUS 1961-1963, Vol. XVIII, 723; Afshin Matinasgari,
Iranian Student Opposition to the Shah, 71; The foreign student census, which was conducted by the Annual
Institute of International Education, showed that 77 percent of Iranian students in the United States were
undergraduates. Less than 7 percent were funded by the government of Iran, and only 2 percent received aid from
U.S. government programs. 68 percent were self-sufficient, and less than 12 percent had other sources of funding,
including private sources and aid from American universities. Refer to Letter from Assistant Secretary of State for
Educational and Cultural Affairs Lucius D. Battle to John J. Rooney, Chairman of the Subcommittee on
Appropriations, House of Representatives, 20 February 1964, General Records of the Department of State, Central
Foreign Policy Files 1964-66, Box 397, IRAN folder, RG 59, NA.
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