GCU professor battles calls to resign because of politician father

Exclusive: Glasgow professor's family affairs

A petition calling for a senior professor at Glasgow Caledonian University to lose his job over family ties to Iran’s regime has received over 36,000 signatures at the time of writing. Hadi Ardeshir Larijani is said by multiple sources to be the son of Mohammad-Javad Ardeshir Larijani — a senior politician within Iran’s conservative government. Mohammad Larijani is secretary to Iran’s High Council of Human Rights and previously had a role as a top adviser to Iran’s leader Ali Khamenei. He has been a vocal proponent for the Iranian regime, and claimed towards the end of last year that Iran is capable of building a nuclear weapon within weeks, but chooses not to. 

Hadi Larijani is the director of Glasgow Caledonian’s SMART Technology Centre, an “interdisciplinary centre of research excellence” that develops “smart innovative computer-based technology solutions”, according to its website. His LinkedIn states that he began studying for a PhD at Heriot-Watt university in 1996, and began lecturing in Glasgow in 2000. 

The Change.org petition was started by the Iranian Scottish Association, a “grassroots community organisation representing Iranians in Scotland”, a spokesperson for the group told The Bell. They said that many Glaswegian Iranians feel “deep concern and unease” at Hadi Larijani’s senior position within the university’s computing department, given that online surveillance and harassment of protestors has been a feature of Iran’s crackdown on dissent. “For people who have fled repression and witnessed or lost loved ones to state brutality, knowing someone with close ties to the Islamic Republic’s political class is working in a local university raises questions of ethics, safety, and institutional accountability.”