ABSTRACT
In the 1960s and 1970s, the Mohammad Reza Shah’s regime embarked on a massive development project that led to uneven development of the economic and political spheres, modernizing the former without changing the nature of the latter. The Shah hoped to fill this gap by a combination of limited elite circulation, forced institution building, the infusion of more petrodollars into the economy, and unfettered economic growth. Many of the Iranian students studying in foreign countries were highly political. In the 1960s, some of them formed the Confederation of Iranian Students and the Moslem Students Association. In 1978, 67,000 Iranian students pursued their studies in the Western nations. In the 1960s and 1970s, Iran experienced rapid social mobilization as established norms and standards were constantly challenged by the exposure of a large portion of the population to new ideas and modes of living. In the early 1950s, the population was small, predominantly agrarian, and highly illiterate.
