The first hint of sunlight glows off the horizon as I rush toward Stanford Hospital from the parking garage, white coat in hand, stethoscope bouncing against my chest. Every few steps, the diaphragm of my stethoscope ricochets off the silver pendant my mother gave me—a nine-pointed star etched with a symbol of my Bahá’í faith. My mother escaped Iran at 17 as the country was on the cusp of revolution—a revolution that would create a society where, to this day, Bahá’ís like myself are barred from obtaining a university education. But here, in the United States, I’ve spent more than a third of my life on a university campus.
The Bahá’í faith was founded in 19th century Persia, and is now the largest non-Islamic minority religion in Iran. Persecution of our religion has helped it expand around the world—my own family’s escape to the United States in 1979 guaranteed that I would be born to the freedom and opportunities denied to Bahá’ís back home.
Back in Iran, the state bans Bahá’ís from studying at universities as just one of many different forms of persecution, which has included desecration of cemeteries, confiscation of property, and wrongful imprisonment. However, because education is such a fundamental principal of our faith, Bahá’í students there have to learn in secret—usually through the Bahá’í Institute of Higher Education (BIHE), whose volunteers quietly teach classes in homes or via online portals. The threat of arrest is constant; the government recently imprisoned both BIHE students and professors, some at the notorious Evin Prison, which has held many prisoners of conscience. I, on the other hand, had the freedom to receive a bachelor’s degree in bioengineering from Rice University and am now in an M.D.-Ph.D. program at Stanford University, filling my brain with pathophysiology and methods of statistical analysis, which I hope to use to serve the community.