Background and Objectives: An Anthropological approach consider university as a society which creates some values and beliefs historically. Meanwhile Tony Becher by his concept “academic tribes” had been asserted on macro structures and abstract level, in this study I focus on micro lives and concrete level in Iranian universities. Among academic crowd, I approach a group who suffer out of social relation and culture. Although college students are the most important members of academic tribe, they locate in a subaltern situation, leading to do violence against them. Therefore, my anthropological focus has been on power relations, culture, and experience.
Methods: Using life history method which is current in anthropological researches, I listen to the story of two students, Masum and Hiwa, in Iranian universities. One of them narrated through first person view point, and the other by third person view point. Then, I analyzed these stories via extracting analytic themes.
Findings: The two academic tribes which studied in this research are in the way of developing the culture of attack-trauma and culture of racist humility. Through telling the life story of Masum and Hiwa, I make sense of violence in academic tribe by locating these stories in contexts, experiences, and outcomes. In the culture of university in Iran, college students in relation to their professors are placed in an unequal situation. The will to do violence by professors exactly rooted in knowing this inequality. The scene of university, in the experiences of the two students, is the scene of encountering the powerful professors and the powerless students. The subtle point is that all students are not equally powerless of which who are the prone to be violated who in the cultural definitions are inferior personally, socially, and economically. These three components form the power to resistance differently among the different students. Spectacles include other students and professors, through silence and pleasance, cause the scenes of violence became the routine procedures of everyday life. Therefore, lay people has an influential role in creating the violence-prone zones. Denying personhood or being human, was the main experience that these two victims had been suffering. They experience and understand themselves as persons who do not have value and because of that they have a capacity to be assaulted physically or being humiliated in front of classmates and other professors. In conclusion, Masum and Hiwa easily became an instrument and then exploited in academic life. The outcomes of this academic violence were long term trauma, will to commit suicide, and addiction.
Conclusion: In apparently calm and peaceful institutions such as universities, there are particular practices and talks which produce “everyday violence”. Everyday violence, which accepted as routine procedures of academic culture, are small wars that are not seen but kill the hope and psyche of students. The suffering which are not telling and not listening crate un-healed wounds as a mental distress among students: Lives full of sadness and rage.