http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601100&sid=aVaNIdJJvcNU&refer=germanySept. 5 (Bloomberg) -- Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said his government plans to purge liberal and secular faculty members from Iran's universities in a bid to revive the ideals of the Islamic Republic's heyday in the 1980s.
``Our academic system has been influenced for 150 years by secularism,'' the official Islamic Republic News Agency cited Ahmadinejad as telling a group of students today. ``We have started to make change happen but we need special support for it,'' he said. ``Students should shout at the president and ask why liberal and secular university lecturers are present in the universities,'' the president said.
The Iranian government also ordered a raid to remove television satellite dishes from homes in Tehran, the capital, saying they threaten the nation's ``psychological security.'' The dishes, tolerated under Khatami, have mushroomed in the past decade. Music, news and talk programs by dissident Iranian channels based abroad are the most popular of the foreign broadcasts.