AMHERST, Mass. — Word of the new policy spread through Facebook, text messages and emails, leaving consternation and fury in its wake. The state’s flagship campus had announced this month that it intended to ban Iranian nationals from admittance to certain science and engineering programs, including physics, chemistry, and electrical and computer engineering, citing a 2012 federal law that limits the fields Iranians can study at American universities.
“It was just unbelievable,” said Nariman Mostafavi, 29, an Iranian graduate student in building and construction technology at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. He compared its policy to one he came here to avoid: “I was myself banned from continuing my education in Iran.”
A provision of the federal law that established new sanctions against Iran because of its suspected nuclear weapons program rendered Iranian citizens ineligible for United States visas if they wanted to study at an American university to prepare for a career in Iran’s petroleum, natural gas or nuclear energy sectors, as well as its nuclear science or nuclear engineering fields.
The law does not explicitly call on universities to carry out enforcement — that is up to the State Department and the Department of Homeland Security. But UMass officials felt that they needed their own policy to make sure they were adhering to the law, and made a move that struck many here as discriminatory.
“It’s counter to our values and counter to our beliefs,” said Mike Malone, a vice chancellor here. “We just felt like we had to do something.”
On Wednesday, UMass officials announced that they would revise the policy, saying that Iranian nationals will not be banned outright from pursuing any academic disciplines, but that the university will develop “individualized study plans” that do not run afoul of sanctions.
“As we got some more information, we were convinced we could do something a bit less restrictive and still accomplish what we wanted to accomplish,” Mr. Malone said.
The policy was revised after a week that left Mr. Mostafavi and many of the dozens of other Iranians here feeling betrayed, some professors and non-Iranian students incensed, and the university administration buried under criticism as deep as this winter’s New England snowfall. The school’s policy not only shocked students, but gained international attention and prompted the State Department to contact UMass officials.
“U.S. law does not prohibit qualified Iranian nationals coming to the United States for education in science and engineering,” said a State Department official, who requested anonymity to discuss United States-Iran relations. “Each application is reviewed on a case-by-case basis.”
But even the revised policy has left many here with enduring unease.
“It seemed to leave room there to still have a class of students be specially treated,” said Paul Siqueira, an associate professor of electrical and computer engineering.
Mohsen Jalali, 33, an Iranian who is studying for a doctoral degree in political science here, said he wanted the policy reversed, not revised. “As there has been no new law, we don’t need a new policy,” Mr. Jalali said.
Universities have long been subject to various export controls, and the dispute has drawn attention to a topic that students and their universities have wrestled with. Young Iranians have been encouraged to study here while sanctions limit what they are allowed to do, putting those regulations at odds with stated values of academic openness and tolerance.
“It does raise how each university has to come to terms, in its own way, with how many foreign students do they want, where do they want them from, in what fields are they qualified to study?” said Allan E. Goodman, the president of the Institute of International Education in New York.
According to that organization, 10,194 students from Iran were at American universities during the 2013-14 school year, a number that has more than quadrupled over the past decade. Nearly 80 percent of them studied science, technology, engineering or math.
“We hear all the time from students who are denied visas because of the field that they’re going to study in, related to petroleum, engineering or something like that,” said Jamal Abdi, the policy director for the National Iranian American Council. He added, “There’s nothing in the law that says the school has to ensure that it is upholding these visa provisions.”
Many universities seem to leave it mostly to the visa process and the federal rules rather than officially adding their own.
“We do not restrict admitted students from classes,” said Kimberly Allen, a spokeswoman for the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, which had 46 Iranian students this year. She noted, however, that any students denied a visa because they wanted to study for a career in a field restricted by the sanctions would be unable to attend M.I.T.
Some schools offer boilerplate language on their websites about possible visa problems for Iranian students who want to study in restricted fields, but only a small number of other schools have gone beyond that. Virginia Commonwealth University states on its website: “We are not able to admit Iranian citizens in the graduate fields of mechanical and nuclear engineering or in programs that have nuclear content.”
“I don’t think a lot of universities have gotten out in front of this issue and tried to implement policies such as UMass did,” said Erich Ferrari, a principal lawyer at Ferrari & Associates, a law firm that focuses on sanctions. Mr. Ferrari said schools should ensure that they were not facilitating activity outside a student’s visa authorization.
Amherst, a progressive college town in western Massachusetts, seemed an unlikely place for hashing out the issue.
“None of us would have been surprised that a university in some deeply red state had done something like this,” said Emery Berger, a computer science professor who has been a vocal opponent of the policy. “For us, to happen here, the outrage is just compounded.”
But late last year, an engineering graduate student who was focusing on energy went home to Iran, and the university was prompted to review her eligibility for the program when she tried to return.
“We looked at the project and decided we couldn’t continue the sponsorship,” said Mr. Malone, the vice chancellor, citing “regulatory reasons and sanctions reasons.” The university changed her status as a student, angering some of her fellow Iranian students, and she was unable to re-enter the United States.
Speaking at a meeting of the Faculty Senate on Thursday, after the announcement of the revision of the policy, the school’s chancellor, Kumble R. Subbaswamy, acknowledged the uproar over the policy and apologized.
“We were the first one to openly say this is how we are grappling with this very complex terrain,” he said.
But it was clear that many here were still upset.
Soroush Farzinmoghadam, a doctoral student from Iran, said the episode had made him feel like a “second-class citizen.”
“I feel somehow that the administration and the campus treat me differently because I am from Iran,” said Mr. Farzinmoghadam, who is studying regional planning.
In response, the meeting’s presiding officer, Richard Bogartz, said he thought that the school was simply trying to comply with the law and did not mean to single out Iranians.
“You should have known better than that,” cried another faculty member.
Some here say they hope the episode will spark discussion on the matter at other schools.
“I don’t think that it’s over,” said Ernest May, a music professor who is the secretary of the Faculty Senate. “It’s a national conversation about welcoming people from all over the world.”
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