"Down with the Shah!": Political Racialization and the Iranian Foreign Student Revolt

Abstract:While it is commonly assumed that Iranians became associated with terrorism in the American imagination in 1979, during the Iranian Revolution and hostage crisis, this essay explores the "political racialization" of Iranian Marxist students in the US from the late 1960s to 1979. As members of the Iranian Students Association (ISA), these young activists challenged American support for the Shah and were labeled terrorists as a result. Engaging with critiques of orientalism as the singular framework for understanding racism toward SWANA (South-West Asia and North Africa) populations, I show how the political actions and attitudes of a celebrated "imperial model minority" group, rather than rigid notions of religious/cultural difference, precipitated the shift from fighting communism to fighting Islamic terrorism as the global rationale for US imperialism. ISA opposition to the alliance between empire and dictatorship holds important lessons for new generations of anti-imperialist thinkers, who must confront a situation in which the US and Iran position themselves as geopolitical enemies. Third World, transnational, and diasporic feminists have theorized resistance to different yet overlapping sources of oppression, thus making it possible to oppose US aggression against global South nations and state repression carried out in the name of anti-imperialism at the same time.