This article seeks to apply and refine Samuel Huntington’s theory of praetorianism to the post-revolutionary period in Iran. Drawing on the author’s lived experience and employing analytical autoethnography, the study examines political science professors at the University of Tehran and Allameh Tabataba’i University. The qualitative data are analyzed through Max Weber’s method of ideal-typical construction. On this basis, four ideal types are identified as analytical poles for examining dominant patterns of professors’ professional identity and conduct: the government-oriented professor, the intellectual professor, the bureaucratic professor, and the scholar professor. The first type primarily orients its academic activities toward the objectives of the government and the prevailing political power, while the second is oriented toward society and the public sphere. The third primarily pursues personal and organizational interests. These three types have, to varying degrees, marginalized the fourth type, whose primary commitment is to the pursuit of knowledge for its own sake. The emergence and coexistence of these three types, with their distinct orientations, points to the politicized character of the two political science faculties, where the needs and imperatives of other social institutions have entered the university. In other words, the praetorian condition has produced a heterogeneous configuration of professors whose concerns extend beyond the university and who tend to approach knowledge not solely as an end in itself but also as a means of pursuing other objectives. This has turned the faculty into a site of political and economic contestation and generated a contentious and unstable environment, thereby impeding the accumulation of knowledge, the continuity of teaching and research programs, and sustained scholarly dialogue across generations of professors. Consequently, despite intermittent efforts by scholar professors, the conditions necessary for the emergence of a distinct academic scientific style have not been fully established. The article concludes that addressing this structural impediment could, to some extent, remove one of the barriers to the development of a scientific style and the advancement of theorization in political science faculties.