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My Prison, My Home – One Woman's Story of Captivity & Life in IranEvent Date
Location
Address
Speaker(s)
Haleh Esfandiari, Director, Middle East Program, Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars
Haleh Esfandiari is a distinguished Iranian-American public intellectual. The founding director of the Woodrow Wilson Center’s Middle East Program, she is the former deputy secretary general of the Women’s Organization of Iran and has taught at Princeton University. She has worked in Iran as a journalist and is the author of Reconstructed Lives: Women and Iran’s Islamic Revolution and My Prison, My Home One Woman's Story of Captivity in Iran. She lives in Maryland with her husband, Shaul Bakhash, a professor at George Mason University.
Event Details
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Iranian-American scholar Haleh Esfandiari’s arrest and subsequent incarceration in Iran’s notorious Evin Prison in 2007 became an international incident that sparked protests from some of the world’s most influential public figures—including Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, and Madeleine Albright. What started as a regular visit to her elderly mother, ended with Dr. Esfandiari as the victim of the far-fetched belief on the part of Iran's Intelligence Ministry that she was part of an American conspiracy for “regime change” in Iran. Through her ordeal, she came face-to-face with the state of affairs between Iran and the United States—and witnessed first-hand how fear and paranoia could create a government that would take her captive. Dr. Esfandiari joins the Council to share her personal story and extensive knowledge of Iran to paint a picture of this country today and how it came to be.