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Schools

San Juan Pastor Supports Education Under Fire

Local clergyman joins Rainn Wilson of "The Office" to speak out against the Iranian government's denial of education to people of the Bahá'í faith.

A pastor from San Juan Capistrano joined actor Rainn Wilson from The Office at UCI’s Crystal Cove Auditorium on Monday to speak out against the Iranian government's oppression of people of the Bahá'í faith. 

Education Under Fire is a national campaign initiated to raise awareness and a universal call for action against the Iranian government’s denial of the basic, fundamental right to education to believers of the Bahá'í faith, Wilson told a packed audience.

Education Under Fire has been targeting university campuses, including Harvard and UCLA, to educate American students about an underground university in Iran, the Bahá’í Institute for Higher Education.

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Wilson grew up a member of the Bahá’í faith.

"I hadn’t heard until last year of the BIHE," Wilson said. "It was interesting to me because I had never thought about withholding education as a fundamental human right. Education, the right to want to learn, is a fundamental human right."

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Pastor Dave Woods of San Juan Capistrano's  took an active participation in the event as well. 

"I teach the Thursday night Bible Study at the church each week," Woods said. "I got involved with this event because a good friend of mine, Sheiba Kaufman, organized the entire event. Sheiba is Bahá'í, and I am a Christian, and we are both graduate students at UCI working on our PhDs in English."

Woods hopes that this event will ignite a sense of action in San Juan Capistrano college students.

"Many students who attend UCI and other area colleges are San Juan locals, so in that way San Juan residents are directly involved and hopefully will be involved in the future, bringing the campaign to other schools in our area," Woods said.

After a 30-minute documentary, Wilson told the audience that his strong support for Education Under Fire is not only rooted in his faith, but in his role as a father.

"If the same thing were happening in the United States and here is my son, a young Bahá’í kid growing up in the suburbs of Los Angeles and he wanted to go to college, and to picture what it would be like to hear our government say, ‘No you can’t go, you have to renounce your faith and part of who you are and what you believe in, in order to go learn,' "Wilson said.

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