Jorge Santa Cruz / Contributing Writer
Always surrounded by a crowd of students, adjunct instructor Abdolrahim Javadzadeh walks to his own beat, conversing endlessly and blurring the distinction between professor and student.
Soon, however, his time at FIU may end.
Javadzadeh, better known as “Professor Abdy,” earned his doctorate in sociology from FIU in 2007, but he’s actually been teaching here 11 years.
During that time, he has asked numerous times to become a full-time professor, a request that has been denied repeatedly.
“You do your Ph.D. thinking about better opportunities. This has not been the case. I’m moving on,” Abdy said, noting that he is weighing two opportunities at other institutions.
But he he’s not leaving before an organized group of students gathers 1,000 student signatures on a petition asking FIU to retain him.
“I signed the petition because there are not enough professors with his qualities,” Raul
Alonso, a senior sociology major, said. “He gets you to think. He cares about the students.”
Since last September, the petition has flown from student to student, and it will be delivered to the Department of Global & Sociocultural Studies after it reaches one thousand signatures, a precedent not seen before, according to some sociology faculty members.
The document probably will be delivered this week or next.
“He is very available to students before and after class to discuss the issues of the day,” said Amal Aldito, a senior women’s social studies major. “He teaches critical and analytical thinking within a sociological context.”
The department chair has declined comment on the situation, but, according to some sources, the department is reevaluating Abdy’s adjunct status.
“Because you have a Ph.D., and you have the knowledge, that does not mean you know how to transfer your knowledge,” Abdy said. “You have to be interested in people. Teaching has to be in your personality.”
FIU’s denial to give full-time status to Abdy is not based on a written rule, but faculty in the sociology program say it is common practice to diversify faculty by giving preference to candidates who hold doctorates from other institutions. Doing so allows students to learn a wide range of perspectives, instead of one institutional theme, specialty or method.
Born outside of the Iranian capital of Tehran, Abdy was sent to the United State by his father, an arbitrator of the Justice Department, to study high school in a boarding school in Washington, D.C., in 1979.
“My adaptation to the United States was a little traumatic because my father, two years earlier, sent me to England to study English when I was a young teen,” Abdy remembers. “And when I arrived, I could not understand Americans’ accent.”
After graduating high school, his dad bought him a car, and he drove south to study civil engineering at the University Of Miami, a time during which he joined different
Iranian groups to denounce human rights abuse in his home country.
“Iranians here in the US are vey rebellious,” Abdy said. “We are all well grouped, and really fight for the human rights in our country.”
Abdy transferred to Miami Dade College to complete his associate’s degree, then finishing his bachelor’s in civil engineering at FIU.
“I was more concerned to talk to the workers than to do my job working as a senior inspector in a consulting company,” Abdy said. “So after 12 years, I decided to change my career.”
In 2000, Abdy came back to the FIU to do his Ph. D. in sociology and finish his book,
Marxist into Muslims: Prevailing Islamic Ideology in the Middle East, which was published on December 27, 2010.
“Whether you like it or not as a professor, you are forced to learn from the students’ experience,” Abdy said. “They bring different ways of thinking, so there is not a monolithic way of thinking. Each class has at least 15 nationalities.”
Abdy taught his first class, an uncommon upper division class for a rookie professor, when his first professor at the Ph. D. program noticed he was able to teach.
During breaks, Abdy travels to Iran working on his second book, which he is writing in Persian, about an Iranian dissident.
Now almost 50, Abdy drives daily around south Florida, with the trunk of his car filled with books and a pair of soccer shoes for his Wednesday game, trying to find a public spot to quench his inner necessity to interact with society.
“I have taken four core classes with Dr. Javazadeh. What I most admire about him is his ability to stimulate students to take initiatives to learn knowledge and find truth,” said Viviana
Acosta, a senior sociology major.
“Students can feel the energy and optimism radiating from his teaching.”
Jorge Santa Cruz, a senior journalism major, produced this story in the JOU 3303 Advanced News Writing course taught by Dr. Fred Blevens.
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