Why is the importance of supporting and protecting the scientific elite from the perspective of the Iranian Supreme Leader in line with scientific authority: a research based on thematic analysis

Today, the elites, as the country's scientific assets, play an important role in the country's development, and the country's development depends on them. One of the most important damages and challenges facing human capital in a country is the issue of elite migration, which has caused the loss of an important part of capital in developing countries. Scientific self-confidence, scientific elitism and maintaining elites are important scientific dimensions for the category of scientific authority. Scientific authority means becoming a scientific center, which was proposed by the Supreme Leader in the country's scientific discourse. Considering the various harms that are lurking among the scientific elite, it is necessary to pay more attention to the elite society in advance. In this regard, the aim of the current research is to explain the reasons for the importance of supporting and protecting the elite society. This research is qualitative and exploratory in terms of purpose. The society and the field of research includes the statements of the Supreme Leader regarding the protection and support of researchers and scientific elites. The data were collected by means of document study and data collection. In order to identify and discover themes, the theme analysis method has been used. In order to extract the basic, organizing and comprehensive themes, the text of the Supreme Leader's statements was analyzed. After analyzing the data through the theme analysis process, 62 basic themes, 6 organizing themes and 3 overarching themes were extracted. The themes of the organizer include: "functional importance and the need to pay attention to the elites", "the spiritual importance of the elites and their orientations", "the importance of protecting and maintaining the elites", "the importance of paying attention to the capabilities of the elites and their growth", "the moral responsibility of the elites" and " The importance of elites from a religious point of view", the overarching themes include: "the need to honor the elites", "the need to build and protect the elites" and "the importance of the elites' responsibility".