Commemoration of Dr. Hormoz Hekmat

A commemoration event honoring the late Dr. Hormoz Hekmat, a scholar, activist, thinker, and patriot. The event will include in person and pre-recorded talks from notable scholars as well as a few family members. Event is in Persian and English. The event will not be live-streamed but a recording will be made available at a later date. 

PLEASE NOTE: Time is in Eastern Standard Time. Event is in Persian and English.

Speakers

Mahnaz Afkhami, Director of Foundation of Iranian Studies and President of Women's Learning Partnership

Mahnaz Afkhami is the Founder and President Emerita of Women’s Learning Partnership and former Minister for Women’s Affairs in Iran. Afkhami has been a leading advocate of women's rights for more than four decades, having founded and served as director and president of several international non-governmental organizations that focus on advancing women's status. Afkhami has also served on advisory boards and steering committees of a number of national and international organizations including Freer Galleries of The Smithsonian Institution, The Global Fund for Women, Women's Rights Division of Human Rights Watch, and the World Movement for Democracy. Afkhami’s publications have been widely translated and distributed internationally, including "Women in Exile"; "Faith and Freedom: Women’s Human Rights in the Muslim World"; "In the Eye of the Storm: Women and the Law in Iran"; "Leading to Choices: A Leadership Training Handbook for Women"; "Beyond Equality: A Manual for Human Rights Defenders"; and "Victories Over Violence: Ensuring Safety for Women and Girls," among others. Her memoir, "The Other Side of Silence: a Memoir of Exile, Iran, & the Global Women's Movement" was published in 2022 by UNC Press.

Dr. Ahmad Ashraf, Sociologist and Editor of Iranica (prerecorded)

Ahmad Ashraf has taught sociology and the social history of Persia at the University of Pennsylvania, Columbia University, Princeton University, and Tehran University. He is the author of several books and numerous articles, including Historical Obstacles to the Development of Capitalism in Iran (1980). His writings have covered such topics as social hierarchies in Persia, tradition and modernity, Iranian national identity, agrarian relations in Persia, and charismatic leadership and theocratic rule in post-revolutionary Persia. Dr. Ashraf served on the editorial board of the Iranian Studies, International Journal of Politics, Culture, and Society, and Iran-Nameh. Since 1992, he has served as a Trustee-at-Large of the American Institute of Iranian Studies.

Dr. Touraj Atabaki, Professor Emeritus Social History of the Middle East and Central Asia at the Leiden University (prerecorded)

Touraj Atabaki is Senior Researcher at the International Institute of Social History and Professor Emeritus, holder of the chair of the Social History of the Middle East and Central Asia at the Leiden University. Atabaki studied first theoretical physics and then history, and worked at Utrecht University, University of Amsterdam, and Leiden University. He is the founder of the Sadighi Research Fund and the Prince Dr Sabbar Farman-Farmaian Research Project. He is a past President of the Association for Iranian Studies (AIS) and European Society for Central Asian Studies (ESCAS). His latest books are "Social History of the Iranian Oil Industry" (Cambridge University Press, Forthcoming), "Zhertvy vremeni: zhizn’i sud’ba iranskikh politicheskikh dei͡ateleĭ i trudovykh migrantov v mezhvoennyĭ" - with Lana Ravandi-Fadai (Moscow, 2020, forthcoming English translation as "Fallen in the Whirlwind: Life and Time of Iranian Migrant Labour and Political Activists during the Soviet Great Purge"). His articles on social history of workers and labouring poor in West and Central Asia have appeared in International Labour and Working-Class History, Iranian Studies, and Studies in History. Atabaki’s fields of research encompass Social History of the Middle East, the former Soviet South, the Caucasus and Central Asia, Labour and Subaltern Studies, Migration and Social Historiography.

Dr. Ali Banuazizi, Research Professor of Political Sciences at Boston College

Ali Banuazizi is Research Professor of Political Science at Boston College and Research Fellow at the Center for International Studies at M.I.T. After receiving his Ph. D. from Yale University in 1968, he taught at Yale and the University of Southern California before joining the Boston College Faculty in 1971. Since then, he has held visiting appointments at the University of Tehran, Princeton, Harvard, and Oxford University. He served as the founding editor of the journal of "Iranian Studies" from 1968 to 1982. He is a past President of the Association for Iranian Studies (AIS), of the Middle East Studies Association (MESA), and Associate Editor of the "Encyclopedia of Islam and the Muslim World" (2016). He is the author of numerous articles on society, culture, and politics of Iran and the Middle East, and the co-author (with A. Ashraf) of "Tabaqat-e ijtima’i, dowlat va enqelab dar Iran" [Social Classes, the State and Revolution in Iran] (1387/2008); co-editor (with M. Weiner) of three books on politics, religion and society in Southwest and Central Asia, and co-editor (with A. Babaknia) of "Ardeshir Monassess: A Retrospective" (2022).

Dr. Ladan Boroumand, Founder of AbdolRahman Boroumand Foundation, Human Rights Activist

Dr. Ladan Boroumand is the co-founder of the Abdorrahman Boroumand Center for the Promotion of Human Rights and Democracy in Iran, a nongovernmental organization that promotes human rights awareness through education and information dissemination, including by way of the online human rights library Omid memorial, a website that documents human rights abuses committed by the Islamic Republic and memorializes its victims. She is the co-laureate of the 2009 Lech Walesa Award for her work in defense of human rights in Iran. In addition, she serves on the Steering Committee of the World Movement for Democracy.

Dr. Abbas Milani, Professor and Director of Hamid and Christina Moghadam Program on Iranian Studies, Stanford University

Abbas Milani is the director of the Hamid and Christina Moghadam Program in Iranian Studies at Stanford University and co-director of the Iran Democracy Project and a research fellow at the Hoover Institution. His expertise is U.S.-Iran relations as well as Iranian cultural, political, and security issues. Milani is the author of numerous books in Persian and English including "Modernity and Its Foes in Iran"; "Lost Wisdom: Rethinking Persian Modernity in Iran"; "Tales of Two Cities: A Persian Memoir"; "The Shah"; "Culture and Politics in Contemporary Iran" (co-edited with Larry Diamond); "Saadi and Humanism" (co-authored with Maryam Mirzadeh); and most recently two volumes of "30 Portraits." Dr. Milani edited and wrote the introduction for "A Window into Modern Iran: The Ardeshir Zahedi Papers at the Hoover Institution Library & Archives" and edited and translated "An Encounter with Dylan Thomas" by Ebrahim Golestan.

Azar Nafisi, Writer and Scholar

Azar Nafisi is best known as the author of the national bestseller "Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books," which electrified its readers with a compassionate and often harrowing portrait of the Islamic revolution in Iran and how it affected one university professor and her students. She was born and raised in Iran and came to the United States to earn her Ph.D. at the University of Oklahoma during the 1970s. Afterwards, Nafisi returned to Iran and taught English at the University of Tehran. In 1981, she was expelled for refusing to wear the mandatory Islamic veil and did not resume teaching until 1987. She taught at the Free Islamic University and Allameh Tabatabai, and then held a fellowship at Oxford University, teaching and conducting a series of lectures on culture and the important role of Western literature and culture in Iran after the Revolution in 1979. Dr. Nafisi returned to the United States in 1997 — earning national respect and international recognition for advocating on behalf of Iran's intellectuals, youth, and especially young women.

Parking

Southwest Quad Parking Garage, 3850 North Road, Washington, DC 20057