TU/e spokesman Peter van Dam informs us that no Eindhoven Master programs will belong to the exceptions. Therefore Iranians are welcome again to all Eindhoven programs.

This week a group of professors will determine which Master and doctorate programs will be among the exceptions. Later the Cabinet will lay down a protocol for Iranians who want to follow ‘excepted programs’ nevertheless. This is the outcome of many weeks of negotiations between the universities and Ministers Ronald Plasterk (OCW) and Maxime Verhagen (Foreign Affairs). An OCW spokesman explains that the AIVD intelligence service will screen Iranian students before they can begin on such a specialist program. This also applies to students with a double nationality, students with a Dutch mother and an Iranian father, for instance.

Twente decided to keep out new Iranian students, after the Immigration and Naturalization Service (IND) had asked for a guarantee that Iranians would not gather any sensitive nuclear knowledge. The TU/e was of the opinion that it could not give that guarantee for anyone, and left the resolution on admission to the central government. The IND denies having demanded any hard guarantees, for that matter.

Ministers Verhagen and Plasterk did send the educational institutes a letter at the end of last year asking them to exercise reserve in teaching Iranian students. They were not allowed to gain any knowledge here with which they could contribute to the development of a nuclear bomb in their native country. That letter was occasioned by a new resolution adopted by the United Nations.

The Eindhoven Executive Board was of opinion that the confusion regarding the admission of Iranian students and PhD candidates could have been prevented if the government had first consulted the universities and unambiguous rules had been drawn up subsequently.(HOP)/.