Indifferent to the Fate of Freedom Elsewhere

“We need to get the bastards out of here.” It’s a statement that could have been uttered by many American presidents about a wide array of groups through history. John Adams, perhaps, may have said it about the French, or Andrew Jackson about Native Americans. Franklin Roosevelt could have said it about the Japanese, Richard Nixon about the Arabs, or Donald Trump about nearly everyone. But in early November 1979, following the seizure of the U.S. embassy in Tehran and amid ongoing protests on American campuses by Iranian student groups, it was spoken by Jimmy Carter. 

By the late 1970s, neither the presence of Iranian students nor the spectacle of their campus protests was new. Iran was the first Middle Eastern nation to sign onto the Fulbright Exchange Program in 1949. The country immediately began to send its young people to western universities, with the majority traveling to the U.S. In 1952, the process for extending F-1 visas to student nonimmigrants was simplified, and by the latter half of Carter’s presidency, there were over 56,000 Iranian students enrolled across the country, attending everything from small community colleges to the schools in the Ivy League.

From 1953 to 1979, Iran was led by Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi, an authoritarian ruler who had come into power through a CIA coup orchestrated to secure western influence over Iran during the Cold War. Operation Ajax, led on the ground by Theodore Roosevelt’s grandson Kermit, was the agency’s first major success, ousting the democratically elected prime minister Mohammed Mosaddeq, an Iranian nationalist who had had the audacity to nationalize Iranian oil.

Once in power, Pahlavi developed a secret police force, with the help of the CIA, British MI6, and the Israeli Mossad. It was known by its acronym SAVAK, and functioned as the shah’s chief enforcement agency, with the authority to arrest, imprison, torture, and execute dissenters, both real and imagined.

In 1977, the newly elected Jimmy Carter made a point of stressing his commitment to human rights. In his inauguration address, he vowed that “because we are free, we can never be indifferent to the fate of freedom elsewhere.” Perhaps these proclamations inspired Iranian students to hope that U.S. policy might change, but if they did, it took little time for the administration to dispel the illusion. 

Beginning in the early 1960s, with Iran’s population growth outpacing the capacity of its universities, many Iranian students moved to the U.S., compelled in part by the prestige associated with studying in the West. Once in the U.S., as historian Matthew Shannon explains in his 2017 book Losing Hearts and Minds, the students began to use rights-based language, partly due to their exposure to the American civil rights movements; to them, the U.S.’ propping up of the shah was a human rights issue. The Iranians studying in the U.S. actively organized to raise public awareness about the history of the coup, and to advocate for a change in Washington’s Iran policy. Nevertheless, the U.S. and Iranian government grew closer, and the U.S. became less and less and interested in challenging Pahlavi and SAVAK’s clear violations of civil, political, and human rights. This only pushed Iranian students to increase their activism.

In 1972, the national chapter of the Iranian Student Association (ISA) launched its official publication Resistance, hoping to serve as “the voice of the Iranian people who are struggling against tyranny and oppression by echoing the cry of the mutilated political prisoners who courageously withstand the torture of the shah’s executioners.” Four years later, Rise emerged as the publication of an Islamist splinter group, the Organization of Iranian Muslim Students (OIMS). Both groups were anti-shah, Iranian nationalist groups that covered the student protests in the U.S. in similar ways. Their main difference was in what they wanted for a post-Pahlavi Iran. The ISA ostensibly sought a secular, democratic state, while the OIMS sought an Islamic Republic. 

Less than four months into the Carter administration, an assessment of the U.S.-Iran relationship appeared in Resistance. Amnesty International had recently released a report on human rights abuses in Iran, using the word torture 32 times in just nine pages. Referencing the report, the ISA criticized Carter for maintaining a relationship with the shah’s regime, printing that the “Carter admin. brags about protecting ‘human rights’ on a world-wide scale” but ignored the “most barbaric forms of torture ever known to mankind.” The publication went on to condemn the president for “crocodile tears,” insinuating that he was insincere on human rights. 

Vitriol toward Carter only increased when the shah’s wife, Empress Farah, visited the U.S. in the summer of 1977. Rise told its readers she was only in the U.S. to soften the regime’s image before her husband’s fall visit to the White House. Around 4,000 Iranian students protested that fall visit, and celebrated the humiliation endured by Carter and Pahlavi when a favorable wind caused tear gas fired at protestors to instead chase the executive duo out of the Rose Garden. 

In 1976, the shah admitted to Mike Wallace on 60 Minutes that SAVAK agents were in the U.S. spying on students. Around the same time, 92 Iranians were arrested in Houston following a protest that turned violent. By May of the following year, they stood a real chance of being deported to, as the students saw it, an Iran that would torture and execute them for speaking out against the shah. Iranian student protesters soon found themselves in the same position elsewhere — in 1977 at Navarro College in Corsicana, Texas, and in 1978, at the University of Kentucky. While the arrests resulted in some local backlash, such as a man in Texas burning a cross in the front yard of a home rented by Iranian students, none of the students were deported, and some locals took public stands in support of the protesters. 

The actions of a couple in Kentucky, John and Louise Smiley, deserve special mention. After the 1978 arrests there, they took it upon themselves to pay a $120,000 cash bail set by what they believed was a bigoted local judge. As reported by both the Rise and the Lexington Herald-Leader, Judge Paul Gudgel had made a spectacle of the students’ trial by wearing a bulletproof vest and flanking himself with bodyguards while presiding. He ruled that each student must pay a bail of $15,000 in full and in cash. This seemed unconstitutional to the Smileys. They were most concerned, however, that the imprisonment of the students would lead to their deportation and that they would be harshly punished once back in Tehran. In the October 1978 issue of Rise, the OIMS likened the arrests in Kentucky to the treatment of antiwar protestors in the preceding decade that were “quite right in their opposition to U.S. policy in Vietnam and the CIA’s dirty tricks against the oppressed Vietnamese.” The magazine also praised the Smileys and saw their actions as evidence that the average American was on the side of the students.

The danger for Iranian students escalated after events in Beverly Hills, California, on January 2, 1979. Almost exactly a year earlier in Tehran, Carter had offered a New Year’s Eve toast to the shah for creating “an island of stability” in the Middle East. If Carter’s New Year’s visit had infuriated Iranian students in the U.S., what happened in Beverly Hills only alienated them further. The shah’s family owned a home in the glitzy Los Angeles suburb where his mother and sister were staying. California had thousands of Iranian students, but there were likely even more present that weekend because of the annual ISA conference nearby. At a protest outside the Pahlavi home, angry students began to throw bottles and rocks, shattering the home’s windows. Some clashed with the police outside while screaming “Death to the shah!” 

The Los Angeles City Council and the Beverly Hills mayor immediately asked the Carter administration to revoke the visas of any Iranian found guilty of rioting. There was a national outcry as well, with Texas Sen. Lloyd Bentsen, Tennessee Rep. Robin Beard, and Arizona Rep. Barry Goldwater making similar demands, and letters pouring into the U.S. Attorney General’s office from outraged citizens. A man in Michigan wrote demanding to “deport these bastards,” but admitted as a “native-born American” he had no faith it would happen. 

Both the ISA and OIMS, on the other hand, were convinced deportations were imminent. The Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) investigated Iranian students at 14 different colleges and universities in California. It appears that no deportations resulted from these events, though not all documents relating to the investigation are available. But while INS and the attorney general’s office were investigating students, the shah was being forced out of Iran for good. On January 16, 1979, he was officially toppled by the Iranian Revolution, and Ayatollah Khomeini returned to Iran after years of exile. Carter extended to the students voluntary departure status, meaning they did not need an active visa to remain in the U.S. if they were afraid of returning to a country amid a revolution. At the beginning of the year, INS policy had also shifted so that F-1 visas did not have to be renewed annually and instead lasted for the duration of student status. 

Small campus protests continued throughout 1979 as U.S. diplomats toured the country giving lectures about the Iranian Revolution. But nothing significant occurred until November 4, when the U.S. embassy in Tehran was seized and American diplomatic hostages were taken in response to Carter having allowed the shah into the U.S. for cancer treatment. The shah had been keeping his cancer secret for years, and many Iranians did not believe that was why he was being given refuge in the U.S.. They assumed instead that it was in preparation to repeat the 1953 coup and reinstall Pahlavi. Iranian protestors flooded the country’s campuses and streets from Connecticut, to Arkansas, to Oregon, and most places in between. Carter, enraged over the embassy seizure and feeling a sense of humiliation, now actively worked to deny protest permits on federal property in DC, going as far to say, “if I wasn’t President, I’d be out in the streets myself and would probably take a swing at any [Ayatollah Ruhollah] Khomeini demonstrator.”

Before the embassy was seized, demands for student deportation targeted rioters. But the White House was soon inundated with letters from local, state, and federal officials, as well members of the public, demanding deportation as retaliation against all Iranians studying in the U.S. Sen. Bentsen issued a press release demanding deportations for “demonstrating illegally.” Elected officials from Ohio, New Jersey, Idaho, and Louisiana wanted all Iranian students removed. In the three days following the embassy seizure, 300 telegrams poured in demanding that all Iranian student visas be revoked until the hostages were released. Within the administration, there was pressure to freeze all Iranian student bank accounts, effectively forcing those students to self-deport. (As demonstrated by Adam Goodman in Deportation Machine, this is a tactic that has been used by U.S. officials since the 19th century to force immigrants to leave.)

On November 10, President Carter ordered INS to assess all Iranian students in the U.S. for deportation. The special visa status he had extended several months earlier was revoked. The White House also sought to discourage or revoke protest permits, fearing that the hostages in Tehran could face retaliation if Iranian students were injured in American streets.

Around 2,000 students at the University of Washington welcomed the INS order with “deport, deport, deport” chants and signs that read “Iranians Go Home.” At the University of Arkansas, students burned Iranian flags, placed harassing phone calls, and hung Iranian effigies. Groups gathered at the University of California, Los Angeles, and at Beaumont University in Lamar, Texas, to demonstrate against the Iranian students, some using racial epithets like “camel jock.” Outside the Iranian consulate in Houston, demonstrators held signs that said, “Give Americans Liberty or Give Iranians Death.” A bar near the University of North Texas posted the sign, “No dogs or Iranians allowed.” As a self-defense response, some Iranians began to change their hair, give fake names, lie about their nationality, withdraw as best as possible from the public, and in at least one case agree to self-segregate into classes with only Iranians in them.

The administration was also met with resistance. The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) called the INS order a “witch hunt” because it was not just aimed at violent protestors. By the end of November, around 20,000 interviews had been conducted. But the proceedings abruptly stopped after the ACLU challenged the order with two class-action lawsuits, arguing Carter did not have the authority to change immigration policy or target a specific nationality with existing policy.

The lawsuits were consolidated and in early December; U.S. District Court Judge Joyce Green, a Carter appointee, ruled that Carter’s order violated the 14th Amendment’s guarantee of equal protection and was an overreach of executive power. But on appeal, her decision was overturned, and the Supreme Court allowed the reversal to stand. 

INS interviews and campus protests continued well into 1980, as did widespread anti-Iranian sentiment. In New Jersey, a young Iranian woman was forced to withdraw from her role as commencement speaker when a teacher circulated a petition, signed by more than half of the school’s teachers, demanding she be denied the privilege as a response to the embassy seizure. The teacher was eventually censured by the state’s Board of Education. 

Carter had made it clear when he issued the INS order that he wanted exceptions made on humanitarian grounds. Presumably this meant not deporting anyone the administration knew for certain would be persecuted in Iran. But anti-Khomeini officials in many states had been emboldened by the president’s directive and ignored its nuances. During the spring of 1980, the Mississippi state legislature increased tuition for students by 480% if the student’s home country did not have diplomatic ties to the U.S. The Louisiana State University system and the Arkansas Legislative Council both tried to block enrollment and re-enrollment by Iranians, and the Board of Regents at New Mexico State University tried to deny enrollment to Iranians. Around the same time, and in part because of pressure placed on the administration by Jewish groups, all non-Shia Iranians were made exempt from the deportation order, effectively adding a religious test to immigration enforcement.

There was one last major protest before the hostage crisis concluded. In late July 1980, pro- and anti-Khomeini groups clashed in Washington, DC. When a few of the 193 people arrested went on hunger strike, the State Department quickly moved to grant some of them early release, which led to a minor press scandal. The risk of Iranians dying in U.S. custody because of a hunger strike threatened deadly consequences for the Americans held in Tehran. As Gary Sick of the National Security Council put it, the “students … are becoming a cause célèbre … and may have more influence on the fate of the hostages than any of the geopolitical considerations.”

The hostage crisis officially ended after the Algiers Accords negotiated by Carter was signed on January 19, 1981. The following day, only a few minutes after Ronald Reagan was sworn into office, the hostages were released. (There is significant evidence the Reagan campaign actively worked to keep the hostage crisis from resolving before the election.)

During the crisis, INS interviewed 56,694 students. Deportation hearings were held for 7,177, and 3,088 were ordered to leave. Only 445 were confirmed to have left. The exact reason they may have left the U.S. is difficult to know, but it was likely due to losing student status, having been arrested at a protest, or willingly returning to Iran to participate in shaping a post-Pahlavi society. But regardless of whether a student was deported, each was targeted in response to the embassy seizure, an event for which none shared responsibility. They were chosen because of their nationality, because the nation and its president were angry, because they were vulnerable, and because they were convenient. Most importantly though, it was because the president desperately needed to protect U.S. national interest and security by maintaining a relationship with Iran during the Cold War. The threat of deportation as part of its soft power, or non-military, approach, the administration hoped, would convince Iran to release the American hostages. The approach failed and Carter was eventually left no choice but to attempt a military rescue in late April 1980.

In the days that followed the Carter administration’s November 1979 decision to investigate all Iranian students, California congressman Don Edwards wrote to Carter and urged him to reconsider:

“What is apparent … is that this action is selective enforcement against a particular nationality, calculated primarily to respond to public sentiment. This nation's response in World War II towards Japanese-Americans was born of the same kind of fears. That response…is now considered to have been a bigoted and undemocratic overresponse. I fear that history will make the same judgment on the present order.”

Every semester I tell my students that we study our past to understand our present so that we have the knowledge needed to work toward a better future. Targeting immigrants in response to domestic and international events that have little to do with them has been common throughout the nation’s history. From the Chinese Exclusion Act to the Palmer raids to Operation Wetback and beyond, the nation’s guests are routinely caught up in events beyond their own control and targeted in the name of political expediency. Some of these immigrants have, like the Iranian student protestors in the 1970s, organized in opposition to U.S. policies that they see as threats to communities in their home countries. In those moments, we can take inspiration from people like Representative Don Edwards — and the Smileys of Kentucky — and work to ensure that the rights to peaceful assembly and free speech are not denied to anyone in the U.S, be they citizen or not.