Mitra Shavarini – Educator & Author,
Fatemeh Haghighatjoo, Former Iran Parliamentarian,
Nazila Fathi, Journalist
“We have seen courageous women stand up to brutality and threats, and we have experienced the searing image of a woman bleeding to death on the streets.” President Barack Obama referring to Neda Agha Soltan, a young Iranian woman who was shot by a sniper during Iran’s 2009 Green Movement street protests.
Join us as we celebrate “International Women’s Day” with a discussion that offers us three voices/perspectives on the role women assume in Iranian society. Our guests will discuss the social, political, and educational opportunities that exist for Iranian women. They will also examine the role women play in contemporary politics (and how that involvement has shifted and expanded throughout Iran’s history). Walden Forum on Friday, March 8, at 7:30 p.m. at The First Parish 1815 Meeting House in Wayland.
The conversation will include how the lives of Iranian women have changed since the 1979 Revolution, including why women are required to wear a veil. Sharing their thoughts on wearing the veil will address some of the most common misconceptions Westerners hold of Muslim women, generally, and Iranian women, specifically.
First, Dr. Shavarini, university lecturer and author, will present the educational opportunities available to women and how those compare to their male counterparts. Shavarini highlights how obstacles and empowerment push young women forth in one of the most successful public arenas in which they have gained ground. Second, Nazila Fathi will discuss how the 1979 revolution empowered traditional women and drew them from the margins into the center of society. The process has modernized a huge section of Iranian society in ways that a secular regime wouldn’t have been able to do. But the regime’s repressive policies against women have also turned them into the most defiant force in contemporary Iran. And finally, Fatemeh Haghighatjoo, will discuss women’s political participation in Muslim World and particularly in Iran.
Mitra Shavarini, is a lecturer in Women’s and Gender Studies at Brandeis University. She is the author of Desert Roots: Journey of an Iranian Immigrant Family (2012); Educating Immigrants: Experiences of Second Generation Iranians (2004) and the coauthor of Women and Education in Iran and Afghanistan: An Annotated Bibliography (with Wendy R. Robison, 2005). She holds a Ed.D from Harvard’s Graduate School of Education.
Fatemeh Haghighatjoo, The “Lion Woman’’ of Iran – A visiting scholar at UMass Boston. Dr. Haghighatjoo has held academic positions at MIT, Harvard, and the University of Connecticut. Dr. Haghighatjoo is an expert in Iran’s internal affairs and an advocate of human rights, women’s rights, and democracy. In Iran, she was a member of Iran’s reformist parliament from 2000-2004. Currently, she works on “State Feminism” to define the institutionalization of women’s issues in Iran and show how it both promotes and limits women’s position there. She has published book chapters and papers on the Iranian women’s movement and democratic movement in Iran. She is also working on a book manuscript entitled A Voice for Truth. She has authored a book entitled Search for Truth (published in 2002). Dr. Haghighatjoo has been extensively interviewed and quoted by the international media, including The NY Times, Washington Post, Boston Globe, Christian Science Monitor, USA Today, BBC Persian TV and Radio, Voice of America, CNN, and others.
Nazila Fathi – is a journalist, translator and commentator on Iran. She reported out of Iran for nearly two decades until 2009 when she was forced to leave the country because of government threats against her. She was based in Tehran from 2001 for The New York Times until she left, during a time when she penned over 2,000 articles for the Times. Prior to that, she wrote for the Time Magazine, Agence France Press and the Times. She translated a book, History and Documentation of Human Rights in Iran, by the Noble Peace Prize Laureate, Shirin Ebadi, into English in 2001. She has written for the New York Review of Books, Foreign Policy and Harvard Nieman Report and has been a guest speaker on CNN, BBC, CBC and NPR. She received her Masters of Arts from University of Toronto in Political Science.
About Walden Forum
The Walden Forum is a free public series that brings people together to talk, listen and learn from one another in a civil environment. It fosters discussion about important ethical, religious, political, scientific, social, and other topics in a live-forum setting. Dynamic speakers challenge and expand our views about the world around us and offer the opportunity for an open discussion of these issues in a convenient, local setting. Featuringworld-class speakers on great topics throughout the year, the Walden Forum is a non- religious community program supported by First Parish in Wayland and others, and held at the historic 1815 First Parish Meetinghouse at the intersection of Routes 20 and 27 in Wayland Center.
