The Daftar-e Tahkim-e Vahdat [The DTV] was established some months after the Islamic Revolution as a "revolutionary institute" and was the most active and largest political establishment in universities, representing students and youth in post-revolutionary Iran. In the 1980s, when the revolutionary fever was high in the universities it functioned as the arm of the government, however, in the 1990s when the new generation started to conquer the universities, the DTV began to adjust its role. In a challenge with the old guard in the government, it started to lean on the students for support and function as the representative and speaker of the student movement.
Since the mid-1990s till mid-2000s when the government outlawed the DTV, this organization worked as the primary institution that paved the way for the youth to enter the politics in post-revolutionary Iran.
Two decades later, those young activists are entering their midlife and have had different fates.
This paper is an attempt to track the role of this institution in producing political elites in post-revolutionary Iran. By focusing on the members of the central committees (1995-2005) and applying network analysis, this paper centers on their fates and argues that the organization has created one of the most prominent political networks among the new generation of political activists and analyze different fractions in this circle. Then by interviewing some of the leading figures of the DTV, we track the role of this institution in building their political backbone and leadership skills.
