Letter from the Director

I began my tenure as director in July 2019. One of the first, and unexpected, tasks that needed my attention was to hire a replacement for Reagan Maraghy, who served as manager of the Sharmin and Bijan Mossavar-Rahmani Center since its inception in 2014, and who put in place its entire institutional operations. I am certain that without her dedication and organizational skills, the center could not have gained the reputation it enjoys today.

I am happy to report that after a short search, Femke de Ruyter joined us as the new manager. Femke comes to us with more than eight years of experience at Princeton, most recently at the University Center for Human Values. She received her bachelor’s degree in political science from Colgate University and a master’s degree from Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism. Femke brings a wealth of experience and insight to the center. We are indeed fortunate to have her on board.

As many of you have already observed, the center’s website has a completely new look. Last summer, we spent a good amount of time and energy—with noteworthy assistance from Becky Parnian, our amazing events coordinator—and formally launched the new site in September. Please let us know what you think of our new look and ways we can continue to improve it.

In addition to continuing our rich programming and research activities, I have two long-term goals for the center. First, we intend to build a scholarly research infrastructure for the study of modern Iran and the Persian Gulf. Princeton’s library holds one of the largest archives in the country of primary material on modern Iran. We are working with the library’s collections and research services to digitize these materials and to create an “Iran Digital Archive,” which will bring together all the library resources for interdisciplinary research on modern Iran. Second, we will expand our research initiatives and collaborative work with other centers and scholars around the world.

Two new fellows joined the center at the start of the 2019-20 academic year. Amy Malek joined us as an associate research scholar, on leave from her position as assistant professor of international studies at the College of Charleston. Peyman Jafari also joined the center as a postdoctoral research associate; he is on leave from his position as lecturer of modern history at the University of Amsterdam. You can read more about their research projects and their work during their residency at Princeton in the following pages.

In the spring, the center hosted Arash Davari as a visiting fellow. Professor Davari teaches at the Department of Politics at Whitman College in Washington. He is a political theorist who studies intellectual articulations of anti-colonial politics and its proponents in Iran. During his residence, he organized a major conference/workshop, “Deprovincializing Iran,” planned for April. Unfortunately, the conference did not materialize due to the cancellation of public events caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.

I want to thank all of you who attended our events throughout the year. In addition to our lecture series, which continues to sustain a vibrant intellectual community on campus, we inaugurated our book launch series with great success. We hope that this series will encourage greater community attendance at our events. The center also sponsors cultural and artistic events, including a performance of music by contemporary Iranian composers and French impressionist works by classical pianist Layla Ramezan, and through an invitation initiated by Amy Malek, we sponsored the

premier screening of a successful documentary called “Coup 53” that has gained respectful recognition from several film festivals around the world. More that 200 people gathered at Princeton’s Garden Theatre to watch the film, followed by a Q&A with the film’s director and producer, Taghi Amirani, and one of the most sought-after film editors, Walter Murch.

While we were able to host probing academic and memorable cultural events that highlight the breadth of center offerings, the Sharmin and Bijan Mossavar-Rahmani Center also serves as a place of community support in times of tragedy. This was a particularly challenging year. In February, it hosted a memorial gathering following the downing of Ukrainian Airline Flight 752 to grieve the tragic loss of life.

Moving forward, I would like to draw your attention to two important initiatives sponsored by the center.

In collaboration with Assistant Professor Kevan Harris of UCLA (a former fellow of the center), we continue to support the Iran Social Survey, one of the very few comprehensive survey projects that is conducted inside Iran. Two years ago, the first phase of the survey generated a wealth of information about Iranian social life and culture. A second phase of polling will be carried out later this year and will include questions related to the pandemic. Stay tuned for key findings, ISS data and media mentions on the website.

And second is Professor Jo-Ann Gross’ Badakhshan project, which nears its conclusion. She has been a visiting collaborator for the past three years, working on a project funded by a three-year grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities to locate and digitize rare genealogical documents and manuscripts from the Badakhshan region in Central Asia. With collaborators, Gross created a freely accessible digital repository of all the digitized documents dating from the sixteenth to twentieth centuries, called the “Badakhshan Genealogical Document Collection: Transforming Rare Texts into Accessible Digital Resources.”

This year we must also say good-bye to three of the center’s research associates—Khodadad Rezakhani, Amin Moghadam and Daniel Beckman—as they move onto new research positions elsewhere. Nonetheless, we expect our relationship to continue with them as they move forward on their academic journeys.

We look forward to welcoming two new postdoctoral research associates, Maryam Alemzadeh, Ph.D., in sociology from the University of Chicago, and Milad Odabaei, Ph.D., in anthropology from UC Berkeley, who will join us in the forthcoming academic year. You can read about their work in the “Looking Ahead” section of the report.

This has been a difficult year for all of us and we need to persevere to overcome these moments of crisis. Please tune in to our “Virtual Conversations” and more on the center’s website, as we look forward to an exciting year of research activities and events, albeit perhaps virtually.

Yours,

Behrooz Ghamari-Tabrizi

Director, Sharmin and Bijan Mossavar-Rahmani Center for Iran and Persian Gulf Studies Professor of Near Eastern Studies