The Persian-American Educational Society was founded and inaugurated in Washington DC on the January 1910. [BFA2:XVII; 355–8; Washington Herald 9 January 1910]
• Its primary purpose was to assist the Tarbíyat School in Iran by establishing scholarships. Mr. Sidney Sprague was the administrator of the school at this time. Many Americans contributed toward scholarships for children. [BFA2:357]

'Abdu'l-Bahá visited the home of Mrs Thornburgh-Cropper at 31 Evelyn Mansions, Carlisle Place, Victoria.
• In the afternoon 'Abdu'l-Bahá visited the home of Miss Anett Schepel and Miss Alice Buckton, Vanners, Byfleet, Surrey (since demolished), some 20 miles out of London. He spoke with a number of working women from the Passmore Edwards' Settlement who were visiting while on holidays. (The Passmore Edwards' Settlement began in 1890 as one of the first "settlements" run by socially-conscious middle-class educators for the benefit of local working people and their children.) The talk has been entitled, "The small house and the path to true happiness". ['Abdu'l-Bahá Speaks, SYH39]
• Alice Mary Buckton (1867-1944) wrote many plays and poems. Her play Eager Heart was seen by 'Abdu'l-Bahá on His second visit to England. She became a member of the Froebelian Society which was formed to reform educational methods. She persuaded Anett Schepel who had worked at Pestalozzi-Froebel Haus in Germany to move to England and together they worked to improve child education, opening a school in St John's Wood. [ABL85-86, In the Footsteps of 'Abdu'l-Bahá p9-10]

The Second Congress was held at The Hague, August 22–27, 1912. Twenty-three countries sent official government delegates. Over 1,000 members were officially enrolled for the congress. Over 200 papers of some 2,000 words each were contributed and appeared in the five published volumes of more than 1,200 pages. [Wikipedia]

From Alexandria, Egypt, 'Abdu'l-Bahá sent a paper called Universal Education.

From 1967 until 1976 the Harlem Preparatory School was the only high school in central Harlem. The community school, which was set up by a group of black ministers, Catholic nuns, and Bahá'ís, provided a means of education to a primarily African American clientele who were not well-accommodated in the regular system. Under the direction of Headmaster Howard Carpenter, himself an African American New Yorker, the school operated on funding from foundations, businesses and individuals. Those that contributed make a long list that cut across habitual racial and ideological lines. The school employed non-credentialed teachers and the only requirement for graduation was acceptance into a college or university. [From Nayriz to New York: Hussein Ahdieh and the Story of Harlem Prep by Sean Nevins]

Hussein Ahdieh and Hillary Chapman, two who served at the school in both a teaching and administrative capacity, have documented the decade of operation of the school with a website as well as a youtube video Harlem Prep Step by Step and a book A Way Out of No Way: Transforming Dropouts Into Scholars, 1967-1977.

• See Mr. Ahdieh's dissertation Harlem Preparatory School: An Alternative, written some three years before the schools closing.
• See as well The Story Of Harlem Prep: Cultivating A Community School In New York City by Barry M. Goldenberg.

Dan Jordon with Don Streets co-founded the Center for the Study of Human Potential at the University of Massachusetts and, along with other Bahá'í educators and scholars, Dr Jordon started the Anisa Project, a comprehensive, Bahá'í-inspired educational system organized around a philosophical base. The model was adopted by dozens of school systems during Jordan's lifetime.
• See National Bahá'í Review Issue 10 October 1968 p3
• The Anisa Educational Model was inspired by the Bahá'í teachings and the philosophical work of Alfred North Whitehead and soon grew into a national movement that trained hundreds of educators.
• This new educational model was conceptualized as a process rather than a fixed formula. Based on the constantly-evolving empirical framework of the biological and medical sciences the Anisa Model gathered and unified educational practice and theory into a completely new paradigm. [Anisa Model Home Page]
• See the book by Dan Jordon and Don Streets Releasing the Potentialities of the Child.
• Biographical information about Daniel C Jordon.
• See also three articles by David Langness:
  • The Anisa Project: A Bahá'í-Inspired Educational Model.
  • Meeting Dan Jordan: A Most Remarkable Bahá'í.
  • Becoming Your True Self by Knowing and Loving.

The first Bahá'í educational and cultural radio station, HCRN-1 Radio Bahá'í del Ecuador, made its inaugural broadcast at 1420kHz, 20 watts, in Spanish and Quechua from studios in Otavalo. [BBD193; BW17:169, 215–17; BW19:120; VV77; Mess63-86p373]
• Radio Bahá'í was first housed in the Amatu'l-Bahá Ruhiyyih Khanum Institute in Otavalo. [BW18p226]
• For pictures see BW17:216, 218 and VV77.
• Full time programming (six hours a day) was initiated on the 12th of December, 1977. The 1 kiloWatt transmitter was located at Cahas, 20km south of Otavalo. [Radio Bahá'í Ecuador p23, 52]
• On December 12th, 1979, programming was initiated in the short wave band on 2340 kHz in the 120-metre band. The 1 kilowatt transmitter was located about 30 km north of Otavalo at an altitude of 10,000 feet. In 1982 the transmission frequency was switched to 4990 kHz on the 60-meter band. [Radio Bahá'Í Ecuador p205 note 23]
• For further details on this radio station see Radio Bahá'í Ecuador by Kurt Hein.
• See as well the compilation entitled Use of Radio and Television in Teaching attached to the message from the Universal House of Justice dated 25 May 1975.
• Pictures
• 1987-00-01 —
  Faced with unrelenting religious persecution involving a wide range of human rights violations, the Bahá'í Institute for Higher Education (BIHE) was founded in response to the Iranian government's continuing campaign to deny Iranian Bahá'ís access to higher education.
  • See BIHE Website.
  • BIHE developed several unique features which have become its defining strengths. Courses were delivered at the outset by correspondence, soon complemented by in-person classes and tutoring. Later on, leading-edge communication and education technologies were included. In addition, an affiliated global faculty (AGF) was established that comprised of hundreds of accredited professors from universities outside Iran who assisted BIHE as researchers, teachers and consultants.
  • The BIHE was to evolve such that it could offer 38 university-level programs across 5 faculties and continued to develop and deliver academic programs in Sciences, Engineering, Business and Management, Humanities, and Social Sciences. It provided and continues to provide its students with the necessary knowledge and skills to not only persevere and succeed in their academic and professional pursuits, but to be active agents of change for the betterment of the world.
  • The BIHE's commitment to high academic standards, international collaboration and its innovative teaching-learning environment has been increasingly recognized as graduates excelled in post graduate studies internationally. [See list] These unique strengths of BIHE, together with the top-ranking marks of its students, have helped secure its graduates places at over 87 prestigious universities and colleges in North America, Europe, Australia and Asia (India). [Closed Doors, Chapter IV; BIHE]
  • See the statement The Bahá'í Institute Of Higher Education: A Creative And Peaceful Response To Religious Persecution In Iran presented by the Bahá'í International Community to the 55th Session of the UN Commission on Human Rights under Agenda item 10 of the provisional agenda: "The Right to Education" in Geneva, 22 March - 30 April 1999.
  • See Iran Wire 20 January 2023 for the notice of passing of Dr Parviz Javid, one of the three professors who are credited with founding the Bahá'í Institute for Higher Education.
  • See Iran's Systemic Denial of Access to Higher Education by Saman Sabeti.
• 1990-00-21 — The Bahá'í International Community was invited to participate in the World Conference on Education for All in Thailand because of its involvement in the work of the Task Force for Literacy under the aegis of UNESCO. [AWH75]
• 1990-01-00 — The Brazilian Society of Educators for Peace, conceived and initiated by Bahá'ís, is officially recognized by the Amazonas State Government. [BINS219:3]
• 1990-06-04 — The 1st International Exposition on Education for Peace sponsored by the National Spiritual Assembly was held in Brasilia, Brazil. Twenty-three embassies and educational institutes participated. [AWH88, BINS226:1]
• 1993-11-26 —
  The National Spiritual Assembly of the Marshall Islands signed a Memorandum of Understanding with the Majuro local government in which the operation of administration of five elementary schools was legally handed over to the National Spiritual Assembly.
  • President Amata Kabua was the first head of state to respond to the Peace Statement of the Universal House of Justice. [BINS307:4–5; BW93–4:101, CBN Vol 7 no 1 May/June 1994 p29]
• 1998-09-29 —
  Starting this date until October 2nd, in Iran, the government raided some 500 private homes and the arrested some 30 faculty members in efforts to close the Bahá'í Institute for Higher Education, a decentralized university that aimed to give Bahá'í students access to the education they have been otherwise denied.
  • The Institute offered Bachelor's degrees in ten subject areas: applied chemistry, biology, dental science, pharmacological science, civil engineering, computer science, psychology, law, literature, and accounting. Within these subject areas, which were administered by five "departments," the Institute was able to offer more than 200 distinct courses each term.
  • In the beginning, courses were based on correspondence lessons developed by Indiana University, which was one of the first institutions in the West to recognize the Bahá'í Institute for Higher Education. Later on, course offerings were developed internally.
  • Teaching was done principally via correspondence, or, for specialized scientific and technical courses and in other special cases, in small-group classes that were usually held in private homes. Over time, however, the Institute was able to establish a few laboratories, operated in privately owned commercial buildings in and around Teheran, for computer science, physics, dental science, pharmacology, applied chemistry, and language study. The operations of these laboratories were kept prudently quiet, with students cautioned not to come and go in large groups that might give the authorities a reason to object.
  • Among other significant human rights conventions, Iran is a party to the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, which was adopted by the United Nations General Assembly on 16 December 1966. Parties to this Covenant "recognize the right of everyone to education" and more specifically that "higher education shall be made equally accessible to all, on the basis of capacity, by every appropriate means." ["The New York Times" article dated 29 October 1998, One Country Oct-Dec 1998 Vol 10 Issue 3]
  • On the 29th of October, 2019, IranWire featured a story on the BIHE and one of its graduates, Pedram Roushan, a physicist originally from Sari in Mazandaran province. On the 28th of August 2020 Pedram Roushan was featured in another IranWire article about his work with the Google Artificial Intelligence Quantum team. They had just published an article called Hartree-Fock on a superconducting qubit quantum computer in "Science Magazine".
• 1999-04-19 —
  The Islamic Revolutionary Court in Isfahan sentenced Sina Hakiman (10 yrs), Farzad Khajeh Sharifabadi (7 yrs), Havivullhh Ferdosian Najafabadi (7 yrs) and Ziaullah Mirzapanah (3yrs) for crimes against national security. All four were among the thirty-six who were arrested in late September and in early October, 1998 in a concerted government crackdown against Bahá'í education in fourteen cities in Iran.
  • It was reported that over 500 homes were raided in an attempt to crack down on the Bahá'í Open University. Files, equipment and other property used by the University were seized. From report by Human Rights Watch Academic Freedom Committee.
• 2011-09-24 —
  The arrest of Abdolfattah Soltani, a senior member of the legal team (4 lawyers) representing a number of Bahá'ís in Iran awaiting trial for providing higher education to youth barred from university. Soltani is a co-founder of the Defenders of Human Rights Center, along with Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Shirin Ebadi and others. The Tehran-based Centre was shut down in a police raid in December 2008. [BWNS849]
  • In 2008 when Shirin Ebadi took the defense of seven Bahá'ís she was accused of changing her religion and her law office was attacked and faced other problems. [Iran Press Watch]
  • U.S Bahá'í Office of Public Affairs Press Release.
  • See interview with Mr Soltani by Iran Press Watch.
• 2013-07-15 —
  Iranian filmmaker and blogger as well as a former Islamist hardliner who has become an outspoken critic of the government, Mohammad Nourizad, kissed the feet of 4 year old Artin whose parents had been arrested for participation in the Bahá'í Institute for Higher Education. [Wikipedia entry; Faith and a Future p38-39]
  • Some years later Mr Nourizad repeated this gesture, kissing the feet of a six year old boy named Bashir whose parents, Azita Rafizadeh and Peyman Kushak Baghi had been sentenced to four year prison terms for teaching at the BIHE.
• 2018-04-31 —
  Some 80 members of the Continental Boards of Counsellors met for a conference at the Bahá'í World Centre following the 12th International Bahá'í Convention. On that occasion, the Counsellors were able to reflect on major developments in Bahá'í communities around the world. In order to share their experiences some of their stories were recorded and made available via podcasts. The Counsellors discussed the impact of spiritual and moral education programs offered by the Bahá'í community on youth and the communities in which they live, drawing on experiences in Cambodia, Kiribati, India, Norway, Spain, and Timor Leste (or East Timor). [BWNS1264]
  • Counsellors in Africa, Alain Pierre Djoulde, Clément Thyrrell Feizouré, Maina Mkandawire, and Judicaël Mokolédiscuss discussed endeavours in the field of education in that continent. [BWNS1269]
  • The podcasts can be found here or on SoundCloud.
• 2021-11-14 — Update on the BIHE: The Institute has adapted using today's technology. As of this date 955 staff members operated the hybrid online and in-person school. The school offered more than 1,050 classes in its associate, undergraduate or graduate programs. Despite ongoing persecution of the BIHE recorded an average of 1,000 applicants and accepted 450 new first-year students annually.

  Although a number of Iranian Bahá'ís were still held back by Iran's refusal to recognize the institution, BIHE graduates would go on to study at a choice of 98 different international universities and colleges. [Borgen Magazine 14 November 2021]

A brief entitled The Future of Canada: A Bahá'í Perspective was presented to The Royal Commission on the Economic Union and Development Prospects of Canada on behalf of the Canadian Bahá'í Community through the National Spiritual Assembly in Saskatoon. [The Future of Canada: A Bahá'í Perspective]
• Photographs in this publication were contributed by Elizabeth Martin. [HNWE44]