BY CLARE HOWARD
Throughout history, one of the universal tools of repression has been denying access to education. It’s an inhuman and dirty strategy followed by the Iranian government against people of the Baha’i faith.
In total opposition to that discrimination is Bradley University Professor Susan Berry Brill de Ramirez who is committed to the empowerment that comes with education. Her commitment extends from her teaching at Bradley and the books she has written for college students to help them succeed to her volunteer teaching of Baha’i students in Iran. It’s her volunteer teaching of Iranian students that comes with some personal risk.
Key to the Baha’i religion since its founding in the mid-1800s has been the equality of women and the value of education. Those principles are not held by the dominant religions of Iran so since its founding, the Baha’i were persecuted and marginalized.  Baha’i students were kicked out of universities following the Iranian revolution in 1979. After educators organized a Baha’i institute of learning, they were forced to shut down and some of the leaders were executed. In 1983, the Iranian government hung 10 Baha’i women for teaching Sunday school. One was 17-years-old.
But Baha’i education advocates kept pushing, and the internet has tilted the struggle in favor of more universal access to education. The internet has also expanded the faculty of the Baha’i Institute for Higher Education in Iran.
One of the first professors from outside Iran invited to join the faculty was de Ramirez who has been Baha’i since she was in school.
“I was asked if I would volunteer a course in literature for their English majors. I felt it was an honor, and I understood how persecuted the Baha’i are in Iran,” she said.
She estimates she’s worked with hundreds of Iranian Baha’i students, many of whom have gone on to continue graduate studies outside of Iran.
Sitting in her Bradley office overlooking carefully landscaped lawns and gardens, de Ramirez recalled meeting one of her former students outside Washington, D.C.  Seeing her professor for the first time, the young woman dissolved into tears and said “You can’t know what a lifeline you were for me.”
The teaching can be difficult, and de Ramirez has to juggle an already full teaching schedule at Bradley University. She knows she is tracked by the Iranian government and won’t even consider traveling to Iran for safety considerations.
“Being in Peoria has its protection. I might be more worried if I were living in London,” she said.
But despite these issues, de Ramirez is buoyed by progress against repression. Growing up in a family fueled by her mother’s passion for social justice and her father’s Jewish heritage and scholarship, she was exposed to diversity on a global scale at an international high school in Switzerland. She converted to the Baha’i faith as a teenager  and recalls a Baha’i friend at the University of Wisconsin who learned her father had been put to death in Iran because of his religion.
“At the center of Baha’i faith is that we live lives in service to our community and to the world,” de Ramirez said. “The Baha’i faith affirms all sacred traditions of humankind.”
All religions are understood as legitimate and capable of co-existing, according to Baha’i beliefs. Baha’i is the largest minority religious population in Iran.
“The government in Iran would like to see no Baha’i left in the country. Cultural cleansing,” de Ramirez said. “But one of the core principles of Baha’i is freedom from prejudice. How do people work together to make the world better.”
She cites civic involvement as one of the strengths of Peoria and Central Illinois. She also cites working with students as a source for optimism.
“It’s a gift to be able to work with students who are so open and appreciative of a college education. Getting a college education is a struggle for them because of the horrific oppression and persecution against Baha’i,” she said.
When persecutions and crackdowns happen against administration and faculty at the Institute, fearful students often ask de Ramirez what to do.
“This is what you need to do,” she responds. “Go to the course site. Download all materials for the rest of the term. In case the course site is shut down, get your assignments to me by email. We will communicate by email and Skype. My office hours are on Skype. You are still responsible to do your work, and there is nothing, nothing the government can do to keep you from getting your education.”
A longtime admirer and scholar of Baha’i is former Peoria Mayor Bud Grieves. He said the
principles of the Baha’i faith are essential to moving forward to a more unified world.
All religions have some version of the Golden Rule and that should unite us and lead to co-existence, Grieves said.
“Global terrorism and environmental issues are problems the world must work together to solve,” he said, noting that business has learned to work globally but religions have not. Automobiles are an example of corporate global collaboration; components are made in many countries. But in order to control and dominate, many religions deny access to education while the Baha’i encourage access to education.
The founder of the Baha’i faith wrote that if a family with one son and one daughter can only afford to send one child to school, send the daughter because she will nurture the next generation.
Denying access to education is not just a tool of foreign governments but can be used by corporations as well, said Dan Montgomery, president of the Illinois Federation of Teachers and vice president of the American Federation of Teachers.
AFT supports universal access to a free public education for all children worldwide. As soon as corporations and private schools step in and start charging for access to schools, poor children are excluded.
He mentioned some charter schools in Chicago that are mandated to accept all children but charge a fine each time children are tardy. Soon, poor children are kicked out for failure to pay their fines.
Both Montgomery and de Ramirez said America does not have a stellar track record in providing universal access to education.
“We support the United Nations social development goals of a free public education for all children globally,” Montgomery said. “We all agree access to education is a human right. Denying access to girls or to Baha’i or to the poor is unacceptable.”