Cultural exchange: Nancy Dye visits an Iranian university to share her perspective on College administration.

Oberlin College President Nancy Dye spent last week bringing a little bit of the Midwest to the Middle East on a tour of universities in Iran.

She is the first American college president to travel to Iran since the Islamic revolution of 17.

Dye was part of a delegation with Search for Common Ground, a non-profit group seeking ways to mediate between countries in conflict, in this case the United States and Iran. The group has previously sponsored similar exchanges in the fields of athletics and the arts.

Her delegation included the President of the American Univeristy in Cairo and representative of the Research and Exchanges Board, the open society institute among other organizations.

Dye met with students, faculty and administrators at Tehran University, Sharif Univeristy, Univeristy of Ishfahan and the Univeristy of Shiraz. She also got the chance to tour an Islamic religious university, or madrassa.

“There’s so much propaganda about Iran that it’s very hard as an American to get a sense about the place,” Dye said.

“I found it to be a very dynamic. There’s social moving in all sorts of ways. I was surprised to hear many people who are openly critical of the theocratic government.”

Dye plans to look into ways that Oberlin can help to move Iranian-American cooperation forward, particularly through the Conservatory. Music education was banned in Iran after the revolution of 1979 and was not reinstated until 1989. Since then, college level programs to train students in both traditional Persian and western music have begun to appear at universities throughout the country.

“It would be fantastic if we could get a Persian student ensemble to come to Oberlin and send one of our string quartets to Iran,” she said.

“There’s a lot of interest fusing and integrating the two traditions. That seems to be a doable thing to work on.”

The highlight of her trip, Dye said, was the chance to meet and interact with students at the institutions she visited.

“The students I met were extremely bright and very engaging,” she said. “They’re very interested in issues of sustainability and their country’s place in the world. It occurred to me that Oberlin students and these students would probably like each other a lot.”