Iran – Berkeley Lectures Series

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.

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.

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.