The meeting of the Board of Trustees of the Academies was held on December 27th. Dr. Mohammad Mokhber, First Vice President (1st VP) of IR Iran and the Chairman of the Board of Trustees, presided over the meeting.
The attendees comprised the Minister of Science, Research and Technology; Minister of Health and Medical Education; Minister of Culture and Islamic Guidance; Vice President of IR Iran for Science and Technology Affairs; Head, Administrative and Recruitment Organization; and the presidents and representatives of the four Iranian academies.
In this meeting, Dr. Mokhber emphasized that the four academies of the IR Iran, as the beacons and peaks of sciences, literature and arts, should provide intellectual assistance and advice for the government in running the country. He also stated that, “the government is obliged to benefit from the Academies to advance the basic and strategic affairs of the country. The existence of the Academies is of great significance, but their potential capacity has not been used well.”
The 1st VP emphasized the need to define the position and role of academies in the country. He also stressed the promotion of relations between the government and academies, and added: “The meetings of the Board of Trustees of the Academies will be held regularly with the presence of the ministers in the 13th Government.”
He said that the nation’s academics, particularly members of the Academies are the capital and honor of the country, and asked the Plan and Budget Organization as well as the Administrative and Recruitment Organization to allocate the necessary funds and solve the administrative problems and take steps to strengthen the country's four academies.
Dr. Mokhber also referred to the concerns of the Supreme Leader in the field of Persian language authority and the science production movement, and emphasized that in addition to paying attention to the advancement of new technologies in the country, the strengths of Iranian-Islamic culture and art should be reflected to the world so that Persian language would become one of the major languages in the world. He added that the Academies should provide a model for interacting with universities and executive bodies in order to increase the skills and scientific capabilities of the university graduates.
The 1st VP considered the expansion of economic and artistic relations as the two important pillars of interactions between the countries of the world and added that economic interactions are very effective in stabilizing the relations between countries, but economic issues are considered as a superstructure, whereas common artistic and cultural relations between countries takes the strain in the interactions between the two nations and governments.
He also asked the presidents of the four Academies to update their statutes based on the country's needs and requirements. The meeting continued with presenting the reports on the five-year performance, plans and policies of the Academies, the detailed budget of 1400 and the audit and finance of 1399 of these Academies.
In this meeting, the presidents of the country's Academies described their activities during the past five years. This included: the role of Academies in the country, concluding memorandums of international relations with the world academies, research policy and presenting national strategies and collecting and introducing the historical achievements of the country in scientific, artistic and literary fields and cooperation and synergy with ministries and government agencies to solve the country's problems in the medical, cultural, scientific and literary sectors.
At the concluding part of the meeting, the following topics were discussed: the requests, recommendations and demands of the country's Academies, including how to award medals; allocation of financial credits; the need for linking and interaction of academies with universities, industry and agriculture; the need for the Supreme Council of the Cultural Revolution to pay attention to the role of Academies; paying more attention to the position of Academies in the related ministries and executive and governmental bodies; holding regular meetings of the heads of the Academies with relevant ministries; reviewing the statutes of Academies and paying attention to the presence of the Islamic Republic of Iran in scientific and artistic institutions and academies of the world.