All Events – Berkeley Lectures Series

The Holy Family: Iranian Leftists and the Kurdish Movement, Dr. Kamran Matin, August 11, 2024

Kamran Matin is an Associate Professor of International Relations at Sussex University, UK, where he teaches international history, nationalism, and Middle East politics. His current research focuses on the theory of ‘uneven and combined development’, (nation-)state formation, nationalism, and the limits of postcolonial critique. He is the author of Recasting Iranian Modernity: International Relations and Social Change (Routledge, 2013) and numerous articles and op-eds on Kurdish and Iranian politics, and the co-editor of Historical Sociology and World History: Uneven and Combined Development over the Longue Durée (Rowman & Littlefield International, 2016) and the director of Centre for Advanced International Theory (CAIT).

Iran in a Transformative Process by Woman, Life, Freedom, Nayereh Tohidi, January 21, 2024

Nayereh Tohidi is a Professor Emerita and former Chair of Gender & Women’s Studies and the Founding Director of the Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies (2011-2021) at California State University, Northridge. She is also a Research Associate in the Program of Iranian Studies at UCLA coordinating its “Bilingual Lecture Series on Iran” since 2003. She received her MA and Ph.D. from the Universities of Tehran and Illinois in Urbana-Champaign in Educational Psychology and Sociology. She is a recipient of several post-doctoral fellowships and research awards, including a National Endowment for Humanities grant, a year of Fulbright lectureship and research at the Academy of Sciences of the Soviet Republic of Azerbaijan; universities of Harvard and Stanford, the Kennan Institute of the Woodrow Wilson Center, and Keddie-Balzan Fellowship at UCLA. Her teaching and research expertise include gender and sustainable development; women’s movements and feminisms; women and Islam; globalization, ethnicity, and democracy in Iran and the post-Soviet Caucasus.
Her extensive publications include editorship or authorship of three books and numerous articles and interviews in peer-reviewed academic and policy-oriented journals. Tohidi has integrated academic excellence with transnational human/women’s rights activism. She represented women NGOs at the UN-sponsored third and fourth World Conferences on Women in Nairobi and Beijing. She has also served as a consultant for the UN agencies (UNICEF and UNDP) on issues concerning children and women’s rights and status in the Caucasus and the Middle East. Since 2015, she has also joined the faculty board of the online Iran Academia of the Institute for Social Sciences in the Hague.

Transition pathology and two protective powers in Iran, Kazem Alamdari, November 12, 2023

Kazem Alamdari, received his Ph. D. in sociology from the University of Illinois, Champaign-Urban, his MA in Educational Administration from Illinois State University, and his BS from the University of Tehran in Psychology. He has taught at various universities, including UCLA, CSULA, and CSUN. Alamdari has published Ten books and numerous articles in English and Persian, including:
1. Civil Society: Theories, Contexts, and Experiences, 2015;
2. Why the Reform Failed: A Critical Study of the Eight Year Reform Era in Iran: 1997-2005, 2008;
3. Why the Middle East Lagged Behind: The Case of Iran 2004;
4. The Global Crisis: A Critique of the Clash of Civilizations and Dialogue Among Civilizations, 2003; and
5. a best seller that reached to 19th edition Why Iran Lagged Behind and the West Moved Forward, 2000 – 2014.
His latest articles include: “Global Civil-Society Movements: What the World Social Forum Can Do to Change the World’s Situation,” Sociology and Criminology, 2014, 2:2. His article “Religion and Development Revisited: Comparing Islam and Christianity with Reference to the Case of Iran,” in the Journal of Developing Societies, London: Sage, Vol 20 (1-2), has been one of “The 50 Most-Frequently-Read Articles” in five years, reaching number 2 in January 2005. Alamdari was the recipient of a fellowship from the Japan Society for Promotion of Science (JSPS) in Japan, Kyushu University in 1997. As a public intellectual, he is frequently featured in the media and presents lectures at national and international conferences in different parts of the world.

The fate of secular thought in the amendment to the constitutional law of the Mullahs and intellectuals, Kazem Kardavani, Sep 17, 2023

کاظم کردوانی، جامعه شناس (از “مدرسه مطالعات عالی علوم اجتماعی – پاریس “) و پژوهشگر و دارای نشان نخل های آکادمیک وزارت آموزش ملی و تحقیقات و فناوری فرانسه، استاد سابق دانشگاه، عضو و دبیر سابق کانون نویسندگان ایران، دبیر سابق کنفدراسیون جهانی دانشجویان ایرانی، عضو مؤسس و دبیر “شورای بازنگری در شیوه ی نگارش خط فارسی”، عضو مؤسس “کمیته دفاع از حقوق قربانیان قتل های زنجیره ای” است. علاوه بر شرکت مستمر در فعالیت های فرهنگی واجتماعی ایرا ن وی سرمقاله نویس و عضو هیئت تحریره ی نشریه های مستقل سیاسی، اجتماعی، و فرهنگی (جامعه سالم، آدینه، کلک، ترجمه و …) بوده است. وی همچنین در حوزه های زبان وادبیات ومسایل اجتماعی وسیاسی ایران به کارهای پژوهشی پرداخته است و پژوهش های منتشر شده او از جمله درباره آثار مارسل پروست، آندره مالرو، آل احمد، شاملو، اخوان ثالث است.

On “Woman, Life, Freedom” Movement, Parastou Forouhar, July 9, 2023

Parastou Forouhar, writer, artist, a human right activist, was born in Tehran, Iran. She studied art at the University of Tehran from 1984 to 1990 and earned her MA from the Aufbaustudium an der Hochschule fur Gestaltung in Offenbach, Germany in 1994. While living in Germany, in 1998 the politically motivated murder of her parents, Dariush Forouhar and Parvaneh Forouhar were carried out in Iran. As a result, the subject matter of her work is largely autobiographical. Themes of her work include gender and identity, particularly the lives and sexuality of women, as well as religious and political issues pertaining to Iran.
Forouhar works across a variety of media, combining an affinity with ornament, pattern, calligraphic form and symmetry with a delicate aesthetic that belies the violence of her subject matter. She has produced many site-specific installation pieces, animations, digital drawings, and photographs as well as works on canvas. She has had a number of solo exhibitions worldwide, particularly in Germany. Though the inspiration behind Forouhar’s subject matter may be tragic, her work has a great emotional range: the results are sometimes macabre, occasionally darkly humorous, and often purely joyful.
In addition to her art works, Parastou Forouhar has authored two books; “ Bekhan be Naam Iran” in Persian and “Sarzaminy ke dar aan Pedar va Madaram be Ghatl Residand – Ebraz Eshgh be Iran” in German.

An economic alternative for the post- Islamic transition in Iran, Mehrdad Vahabi, June 11, 2023

Mehrdad Vahabi, is Professor of Economics at University Sorbonne Paris Nord and director of the research center on Economics at North Paris (CEPN) affiliated to the French National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS). He has published many books in English, French and Persian. Among them are The Political Economy of Destructive Power (Edward Elgar, 2004), The Political Economy of Predation (Cambridge University Press, 2015). He has published more than a hundred articles in peer journals and is an editor of Public Choice.
His most recent book “Destructive Coordination, Anfal and Islamic Political Capitalism“ introduces a new theoretical framework that examines Iran in relation to the theological concept of Anfal, a confiscatory regime seen in Iran since 1979 where public assets belong to the leader of Iran.

Justice Seeking Aspects of the “Woman, Life, Freedom” Movement, Monireh Baradaran, May 7, 2023

Monireh Baradaran is a former political prisoner who spent nine years (1981-1990) in Tehran’s prisons. Since 1991 that she settled in Germany as a refugee and has focused her activities on fighting against torture and the death penalty. She has authored several books about the psychology of torture, and evaluation of Truth Commissions. Her 1997 memoir “The simple Truth” has been translated into German, Dutch, Danish and earned her the Medal of Karl von Ossietzky of the International League for Human Rights. Currently she is the editor of the Persian internet-magazine Bidaran (dedicated to the memory of the victims of political persecution in Iran), and collaborates with Amnesty International – Germany, as well as Rastyad Collective in documenting political executions of the 1980s in Iran.

An introduction to the discourse analysis of the “Women, Life, Freedom” movement, Mohammad Reza Nikfar, April 16, 2023

Dr. Mohammad Reza Nikfar, is a philosopher and lecturer at the University of Social Sciences and Humanities (Iran Academia), as well as the Chief Editor of Zamaneh Media. He has authored many articles and his books in Farsi and German include: “Violence, Human Rights and Civil Society”, “Critique of Political Theology”, “At the Dead-End of Time, Introduction to the Philosophy of Heidegger”, “The Concept of Peace” and “Faith & Technique” among others.

Liberation Movements in Iran: Political Violence and the Protesting Bodies, Farzad Seifikaran, February 5, 2023

Farzad Seifikaran, is an Iranian-Dutch author and journalist born in September 1987 in Sanandaj. He has studied Persian Literature in Iran and Investigative Journalism in the Netherlands. At present he is an investigative journalist and the director of the human rights section in Radio Zamaneh and has published many investigative reports in the area of politics, social and security issues and human rights.
He has been writing on different subjects for many years as well as collaborating with various publications and media inside and outside of Iran. Since 2017 he has created the Roonak Publishing for the promotion of publishing in exile, countering the censorship and supporting the writers inside and outside of Iran. It has published more than 50 titles in Farsi, Kurdish, English and Dutch.
In 2017 he became an honorary member of the Exiled Writers and Journalists in the Netherlands. He is also a member of the Dutch and European Journalists Union, as well as a member of the International Federation of Journalists.

They Said They Wanted Revolution: A Memoir of My Parents, Neda Toloui-Semnani, October 30, 2022

NEDA TOLOUI-SEMNANI is an award-winning journalist and author. Her work has appeared in various publications including VICE News and The Washington Post among others, and it has been nominated for seven Emmys and garnered two. Her first book, They Said They Wanted Revolution: A Memoir of My Parents was published in 2022 by Little A.

Hamid Noury: From Arrest to Life Imprisonment, Deljou Abadi, September 11, 2022

As the director of Iranian Refugees’ Alliance, Inc., Deljou Abadi has since 1993 authored many reports and articles on the conditions of Iranian refugees worldwide and represented many refugee claimants before the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees and the European Court of Human Rights. Her research on the Islamic Republic of Iran’s death penalty system began in mid 2000s and has since culminated in several submissions to UN Human Rights Council’s thematic and treaty-based mechanisms. In the past two years Abadi has authored several articles on the 1988 massacre of political prisoners in Iran as well as on the prosecution and trial proceedings of Hamid Noury, the only perpetrator of this mass atrocity crime so far held accountable. Her recent article “Anatomy of Hamid Noury’s 198-page Life Imprisonment Verdict,” describes the structure and key elements of Stockholm District Court’s July 14, 2022 written verdict against Hamid Noury.

History of Music in Iran and its Current Structure, Mohammad Khodadadi, August 14, 2022

Mohammad Khodadadi, born in 1979 in Bushehr, Iran, is a Ney player and a composer who is currently residing in Vienna/Austria. He has studied composition of western classical music at the university of Anton Bruckner in Linz/Austria. Mohammad started playing Ney from the age of 15 through strong self-discipline and coaching of Masters of Ney such as Mr. Hassan Kassai, and Mr. A. Afsharnia. He has also studied the Persian radif and techniques of singing with Master Hatam Askari & Seddigh Tarif. He learned to play the piano with Rosita Shaker and Tamara Dolidze in Iran and continued with Andreas Taller in Austria. Mohammad learned composition with Master Alireza Mashayekhi, Professor Soyka and Erland Freudenhaler. Mohammad currently performs as a soloist and composer in various concerts in Europe and Iran.

Cuba, Reality or Dream, Soudabeh Ashrafi, June 26, 2022

Soudabeh Ashrafi is an award-winning Iranian writer and a retired librarian, currently residing in Oakland California. Born in Iran, she has lived in the United States since 1985. Her three published books include a short story collection titled Farda Mibinamat (I’ll See You Tomorrow), Mahiha dar Shab Mikhaband (Fish Sleep at Night) a novel, and Cuba Jazireye Bitaab (Cuba, the Restless Island); Three Travelogues to Cuba, 2015-2020.

Soudabeh won her first literary award, Sadegh Hedayat Foundation Short Story Award, for Otaghi, Khiali (a Room, a Hallucination), in 2000. Her novel, Fish Sleep at Night, was chosen by the Meheregaan-e Adab, and the Golshiri Foundation Award for the best Novel of the year in 2004. Billy, from her short story collection also won the Golshiri Foundation Award for best short story in 2007.

Environmental Social Movements in Iran, a Challenge to the Dominant Narrative, Dr. Elham Hoominfar, May 15, 2022

Elham Hoominfar is an assistant professor in the Global Health Studies Program at Northwestern University. Hoominfar is a sociologist whose research expertise focuses on intersections of environment and society and understanding of social inequalities and social movements with an interdisciplinary approach. She received her first master’s degree in the sociology of development at the University of Tehran, where she also got her bachelor’s degree in sociology. Before she left Iran, she maintained an active research agenda and she was involved in various research and teaching projects in different institutes. She received her second master’s in Cross-Cultural and International Education program at Bowling Green State University, Ohio, and her PhD in sociology from Utah State University. Her PhD project focused on marketization of water and environmental movements in Iran and the US.

Hoominfar has extensive teaching experience in the United States and Iran. She employs a student-centered learning method and a critical view for teaching. She is currently researching environmental justice, water governance, commodification of nature and social resistances with an emphasis on political economy in the Global South and North. She has focused on marginalized groups, and examined issues such as development, natural disasters and social inequality in an array of research publications in both Persian and English.

An anthropological perspective on the question of violence in post-revolution Iran, Dr. Chowra Makaremi, April 24, 2022

Chowra Makaremi is a writer, director and anthropologist at the National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS) in Paris. She has conducted fieldwork and coordinated several research collectives on border control in Europe. She is working on post-revolution violence in Iran and leading the ERC research program “Off-Site” on this subject. She published Aziz’s Notebook at the Iranian revolution (Gallimard, 2011) and with Hannah Darabi Enghelab Street. A revolution through books 1979-83 (Le Bal/Spector, 2019). She directed the documentary movie Hitch. An Iranian Story (2019, Alter Ego, France, 78 min.).

The Fate of The Iranian Community in The Soviet Great Terror, Prof. Touraj Atabaki, March 13, 2022

Touraj Atabaki is Research Fellow at the International Institute of Social History and Emeritus Professor of Social History of the Middle East and Central Asia at Leiden University.
He studied first theoretical physics and then history in Birckbeck College, University of London and then had his PhD in 1991 from University of Utrecht. Atabaki worked at Utrecht University, University of Amsterdam and Leiden University where he held the Chair of Social History of the Middle East and Central Asia. Atabaki’s earlier research interest encompassed historiography, ethnic studies and the practice of authoritarianism in Iran, the Ottoman/Turkey and everyday Stalinism in the Soviet Central Asia and the Caucasus. However, in the last ten years his research interest has focused more on the labour history and the history of work and has coordinated a project on the hundred years’ social history of labour in the Iranian oil industry, funded by the Netherlands Organisation for scientific Research. Touraj Atabaki has written extensively on the nineteenth- twentieth century history of Iran, Turkey, the Caucasus and Central Asia.
Atabaki has published twenty books and numerous articles and book chapters. His latest books are:
– Social History of the Iranian oil Industry (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, forthcoming).
– Victims of Their Faith. The Lives and Fates of Iranian Political Activists and Migrant Workers in the Interwar Soviet Union. Co-author Lana Ravandi Fadaii (Moscow: Russian Academy of Sciences, 2020) Second Edition.
– Working for Oil. Co-editors Elisabetta Bini, Kaveh Ehsani (London: Palgarve Macmillan, 2018)

An homage to the pioneer of modern Iranian journalism, Dr. Sadreddin Elahi, February 13, 2022

Dr. Sadreddin Elahi, born in 1934 in Tehran-Iran, was a renowned veteran writer, critic, researcher, translator, poet, and was one of Iran ’s most prominent journalists. He was one of the first writers of serialized fiction in Iran. He was the founder and editor of the Sport Magazine, “Keyhan Varzeshi”, established in 1955. He taught Journalism in The College of Communication Sciences in Iran and was one of the initiators of the modern style of conversational dialogue in newspaper journalism. He was an outstanding field reporter as his reports from the Algerian War for Independence demonstrated. Dr. Elahi has authored many books including: “Ba Saadi dar Bazercheh Zendeghi”, “Doori-ha va Delghiri-ha”, “Naghde Bi Ghash – Collected Conversations of Sadreddin Elahi with Parviz Khanlari”,”Tefl Sad Saleyi be nam Sher Now-Collection of dialogues and interviews with renowned poet Nader Naderpour”, “Maghaleh ha va Moghooleha”, and “Seyed Zia- Mard aval ya dovom Coup d ‘Etat”.

Iran-China 25-year Cooperation MOU, Younes Jalali, Aug 15, 2021

Younes Jalali has lived in China, Japan and Vietnam and was formerly Assistant Prof. at Stanford Univ.

Pouya Alimagham, The Limits of Empowerment: Women, Gender, and Revolution in Iran’s Green Uprising, June, 27, 2021

Pouya Alimagham is a historian of the modern Middle East. He specializes on Iran, Iraq, and the Levant, focusing on such themes as revolutionary and guerrilla movements, imperialism, representation and Orientalism, “Political Islam” and post-Islamism, and the intersections therein.

His dissertation, titled: “Contesting the Iranian Revolution: The Green Uprising,” was the 2016 winner of the Association for Iranian Studies’ Mehrdad Mashayekhi Dissertation Award, which is presented biannually. In the study, he argued that the Green Uprising in 2009 was a culmination of a decades-long history that constituted a post-Islamist paradigm shift in Iran. He harnessed wider regional history as well as Iran’s own revolutionary past in order to underscore his thesis. The manuscript was published in expanded form with Cambridge University Press in 2020. His other articles and book chapters (some in progress) cover the Arab Spring, Iranian protest music, women in Middle East revolutions, sectarianism, and the psycho-history of post-9/11 discourse.

An homage to Bagher Momeni on the occasion of his 95th birthday, May 23, 2021

Bagher Momeni, born in 1926 in Kermanshah-Iran, is a renowned scholar of modern Iran, public intellectual and left wing political activist. He has researched, translated, and written many articles and books. Noghteh Resources on Iran has recently published “Bagher Momeni, A Political and Intellectual Life”, a two volume book subtitled: “Rahroei dar rah beepayan”.

Political Plasticity, Prof. Fathali Moghaddam, April 18, 2021

Fathali M. Moghaddam is Professor of Psychology and Director of the Interdisciplinary Program in Cognitive Science at Georgetown University, Washington D.C. Since 2014 he has served as Editor-in-Chief, Peace and Conflict: Journal of Peace Psychology (an APA journal).
Dr. Moghaddam was born in Iran, educated from an early age in England, and returned to Iran with the revolution in 1979. He was researching and teaching in Iran during the hostage taking crisis and the first three years of the Iran-Iraq War. After work for the United Nations, he researched and taught at McGill University, Canada, from 1984, before moving to Georgetown in 1990. He has published about 30 books and 300 papers, and received a number of prestigious academic awards.

The Great Massacre of 1988: Causes and Consequences, Nasser Mohajer, March 7, 2021

Nasser Mohajer is an independent scholar of modern Iranian history. He has authored many books and written numerous articles on contemporary Iran, including on the prison systems of both the Pahlavi dynasty and the Islamic Republic, women’s movements for equal rights and histories of the Iranian left. He currently resides in Paris and works with Noghteh Resources on Iran.

Macroeconomic Consequences of COVID-19 on Different Regions, Dr. Nahid Kalbasi, September 6, 2020

Nahid Kalbasi, Assistant Professor of economics at Fort Hays State University, is an experienced economist with PhD in economics from George Mason University and specialization in international finance and monetary policy. She has several years of research experience in econometric modelling, macroeconomics, international finance, and risk analysis in think tanks and academia.
She has published several articles across different disciplines in peer reviewed journals on Macroeconomics, International Economics, Econometric Modelling, Corporate Finance, Risk Management, and country risk.

A Man of the Theater: Survival as an Artist in Iran, Nasser Rahmaninejad, Feb 23, 2020

Nasser Rahmaninejad started his theater career in 1959 in Iran. In response to the authoritarian cultural policies and censorship of the Shah’s regime, he founded the independent MEHR theatre group in 1966, which later became the “Iran Theatre Association”. It continued its artistic work, until it was closed down by the Shah’s secret police in 1974. Sentenced to twelve years in prison and ultimately freed by the 1979 revolution, he resumed his theater work, but was soon forced into exile. He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.

From Myth to Tradition: Woman’s New Year Celebrations in Iran, Zahra Taheri, Jan 5, 2020

Dr. Taheri studied classical and contemporary Persian literature in Iran at Pahlavi (Shiraz) University, and received her Master’s degree in Persian studies from the Pajuheshkade-ye Farhang-e Iran, and her PH.D from the Department of Near Eastern Studies at the University of California, Berkeley. During the last two decades she has taught Persian literature, language, Iranian history and culture, and Gender and culture courses in the Department of Near Eastern Studies at UC Berkeley (USA), the Department of Persian Studies at Tokyo University of Foreign Studies (Japan), and the Middle East and Central Asian Studies Department in the Australasian National University (Australia).

US-Iran Relations: Conflicting vs. Overlapping Interests? Mahmoud Monshipour, Nov 17, 2019

Mahmood Monshipouri, Ph.D., is Chair and Professor of International Relations at San Francisco State University. He is also a lecturer at Global Studies/International and Area Studies at UC-Berkeley, where he teaches Middle East Politics. He is author, most recently, of “Middle East Politics: Changing Dynamics” (New York: Routledge, 2019). Additionally, he is the author and editor of ten more books, including “Information Politics, Protests, and Human Rights in a Digital Age” (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2016) and “Inside the Islamic Republic: Social Change in Post-Khomeini Iran” (New York: Oxford University Press, 2016).

The Fate of the Green Movement: A Review on Iran’s Coup in 2009, Farhad Moradi, Aug 5, 2019

Farhad Moradi is an essayist who lives in Berkeley. His essays cover a variety of genre, including cinema and literature. Nevertheless, all his writings have a political and social approach. Apart from the reports and essays he published on his website, in recent years, he has been written, at the International page and Thoughts of the Shargh Daily, as well as the social section of Radio Zamaneh.

How Khomeini turned the Islamic Revolution into a dictatorship, Mohammad Ja’fari, Jul 7, 2019

Mohammad Ja’fari was the managing editor and the director on the daily newspaper “Engelab Eslami”, established by Mr. Bani Sadr, in June 1979, a few months before Bani Sadr became the first Iranian president. Mr. Ja’fari was active in the paper from the beginning until his arrest in June 1981.
He was born in 1944 in the village of Marbin in the county of Ardestan, Isfahan Province. After graduating from high school and spending two years in the Literacy Corps (Sepah Danesh), he became a government teacher and taught for two years in the northern part of Tehran (Oshan -Fasham). He left Iran in 1969 for Germany where he earned a Master’s Degree in Chemistry.
While outside the country he joined the Union of Islamic Student Associations and became close to Mr. Bani Sadr. He returned to Iran right after Ayatollah Khomeini, a few days before the revolution.

Modernity and Transformations of Life in Iran: From Culture and Arts to Cities and City Planning, Dr. Ali A. Kiafar, June 23, 2019

Ali Kiafar holds a Master’s degree in architecture from the National University of Iran and a Ph.D. in urban and regional planning from the University of Southern California. He has more than four decades of experience in professional practice and university teaching in architecture, urban development/ redevelopment, educational facilities planning and design, educational master planning, and program management.

Iran and the Christian Missionary Experience in the Safavid Period: Between Tolerance and Refutation, Rudi Matthee, May 23, 2019

Professor Matthee teaches Middle Eastern history, with a research focus on early modern Iran and the Persian Gulf. He received his Ph.D. in 1991 from the University of California, Los Angeles. He wrote The Politics of Trade in Safavid Iran: Silk for Silver, 1600-1730 (1999), and The Pursuit of Pleasure: Drugs and Stimulants in Iranian History, 1500-1900, (2005); co-edited, with Beth Baron, Iran and Beyond: Essays in Honor of Nikki R. Keddie (2000); and co-edited, with Nikki Keddie, Iran, and the Surrounding World, 1501-2001: Interactions in Culture and Cultural Politics (2002).

Shahrokh Meskoob’s views on Nationality and Language, May 16, 2019

Reza Mahmoudi, born in Mashhad, received his Bachelor’s degree in History from Ferdowsi University, Master’s degree in History from University of Houston, and PhD in Political Science from University of Texas, Austin. He was an active member of the Confederation of Iranian Students in the US. He taught at University in Iran, was a political activist, and left for the United States in 1983.

New Book: The Last Breath of the Rose, Mehdi Aslani, Apr 28, 2019

Mehdi Aslani (born 1959 in Tehran), was a prisoner of conscience in the Islamic Republic of Iran from February 1985 until March 1989. Since his departure from Iran in 1997, he has been engaged as a human rights activist and independent writer in Germany. Mehdi Aslani has spent approximately two years collecting these documents through meticulous research and outreach to the victims’ families both in and outside of Iran.

The Universe of Love in Persian Poetry, Dr. Karimi-Hakkak, Feb 23, 2019

Ahmad Karimi Hakkak is a visiting Professor of Near Eastern Languages and Culture at UCLA. He has been part of faculty of many university and has received numerous awards for his contribution to the field of Near Eastern languages. He has written more that nineteen books and over one hundred major scholarly articles. He has contributed articles on Iran and Persian literature to many reference works, including Encyclopædia Britannica, Encyclopædia Iranica, and The Encyclopedia of Translation Studies. A specialist in modern Persian literature, his works have been translated into French, Dutch, Spanish, Russian, Greek, Arabic, Japanese, and Persian. He has served as President of the International Society for Iranian Studies and several other professional academic organizations.

Why “Iran: A Modern History?”, Abbas Amanat, Feb 17-18, 2019

Abbas Amanat (B.A., Tehran University; D. Phil., University of Oxford) is Willaim Graham Sumner Professor of History at Yale Univerity. He has taught and written about early modern and modern history of Iran, Muslim world, the Middle East and the Persianate world for more than three decades. His principal book publications include Iran: A Modern History; Az Tehran ta ‘Akka: Babiyan va Baha’iyan dar Asnad-e Dowran-e Qajar; Apocalyptic Islam and Iranian; Pivot of the Universe: Nasir al-Din Shah Qajar and the Iranian Monarchy, 1831-1896; Persian translation: Qebleh-e ‘Alam; Resurrection and Renewal: The Making of the Babi Movement in Iran, 1844-1850.

The Image of Women in the Interpretation of the Myth of Creation, Jan 6, 2019

The Shop Window – Vitrine: Film and Q&A, Monjazi, Dec 9, 2018

Mr.Monjezi, a writer, editor and lecturer has fulfilled his desire to screen The Shop Window as a director. Director Monjezi currently resides in Iran. After showing the film, we will be in direct contact with him. Audience could ask questions and discuss directly with him. We will provide translators for English speaking audience.