Iranian Graduate Students in Chicago Watching a Homeland They Cannot Reach
At midnight in Chicago, the laboratories at Illinois Institute of Technology are still bright. Simulation codes run, experiment, and PhD students refresh their inboxes between experiments. But in recent weeks, many Iranian graduate students have been refreshing something else: a screen that no longer loads. “When the internet is cut, it feels like someone has turned off the oxygen,” says an Iranian doctoral student at Illinois Tech. “You don’t know if your family is safe. You don’t know if your friends were arrested. You don’t know anything. You just keep refreshing.” Thousands of miles away, universities in Iran have once again become centers of protest. Students there chant, gather, disperse, and return, part of a cycle that has defined Iranian campuses for decades. But for the Iranian student community in Chicago, the defining image is not only the protests themselves. It is the sudden silence that follows when the connection disappears.
Living Between Two Time Zones and Two Realities
In Chicago, life continues with deadlines, advisor meetings, and conference submissions. In Iran, their classmates face tear gas, surveillance, and uncertainty. “We wake up and check Telegram, X, Instagram, whatever still works through VPNs,” another graduate student says. “If nothing loads, we already know what that means. Internet shutdown.” The digital blackout transforms distance into something heavier than geography. The diaspora cannot call home. Parents cannot send a simple message saying we’re okay. Rumors spread faster than facts. Screenshots become evidence of life. “In those hours, we don’t do research,” one student admits. “We just sit in the office pretending to work.”
Watching Friends Become Headlines
The hardest part, students say, is recognition. “You see a video of a protest and you think: I know that campus. I walked there. I had coffee there,” one PhD candidate explains. “Then you realize the people running from security forces are your own age. They’re you, if you had stayed.” Some still have group chats with classmates in Iran that suddenly fall silent. “We don’t know if they are hiding, arrested, or just offline,” another student says. “You cannot imagine this anxiety unless you live it.”
Research by Day, Fear by Night
Iranian graduate students in Chicago are part of one of the most academically driven diasporas. Their days are filled with advanced research in engineering, computer science, architecture, and the sciences. Their nights are filled with scrolling through fragments of news. “You present your results in a group meeting and people talk about data,” one student says, “but in your head you are thinking: Did my sister make it home before the internet was cut?” The duality creates an invisible emotional labor, performing normalcy in an American academic environment while internally living through a national crisis.
Community as a Lifeline
In the absence of reliable communication with Iran, the local Iranian student community becomes a substitute family. Students gather in small apartments, share news, translate reports, and try to verify what is real. “We fact-check everything,” one organizer says, “because misinformation spreads fast during shutdowns. We don’t want to amplify something that could hurt people inside.” Vigils, discussions, and quiet conversations after seminars have become spaces where grief and solidarity coexist.
The Guilt of Safety
Many describe a persistent feeling: survivor’s guilt. “We are safe here,” a doctoral student says. “We have internet, freedom, security. And they are risking their lives. That creates a responsibility.” For some, that responsibility means writing, speaking, organizing, or simply telling the story.
More Than a Political Moment
What is happening is not experienced as a distant geopolitical event. It is personal. “This is not ‘news’ for us,” one student says. “This is our family, our university, our memories.” The internet shutdowns make that personal connection even more intense. In a hyperconnected world, forced disconnection becomes a form of psychological pressure that reaches far beyond Iran’s borders.
Waiting for the Signal
Back in the lab at Illinois Tech, the experiments continue. Data must be collected. Papers must be written. But every few minutes, a browser tab is refreshed. Waiting for a message. Waiting for a video to upload. Waiting for a single word.