Events

This panel, organized under the rubric of the History Faculty’s History of Now initiative, brings two historians of Iran into conversation about the historical forces that have shaped the current war in the Middle East. Rather than offering immediate policy prescriptions, the panel situates today’s conflict within longer trajectories. At a moment when history is frequently weaponized in public discourse, this conversation offers historical depth as a resource for understanding rather than division. Its aim is to clarify how we arrived here and why historical perspective is essential for meaningful engagement with a crisis that is deeply entangled with the past and present of the United States and Iran.

Naghmeh Sohrabi is the Charles Goodman Professor of Middle East History and Director for Research at the Crown Center for Middle East Studies at Brandeis University. Her work focuses on modern Iran, political culture, and the relationship between revolution, reform, and state power. An MIT alumna, she is the author of Taken for Wonder: Nineteenth Century Travel Accounts from Iran to Europe (Oxford University Press, 2012) and is currently writing a book on the experiences of the 1979 revolution in Iran.

Ali Banuazizi is Research Professor of Political Science at Boston College and Affiliated Faculty at the Center for International Studies at M.I.T. He is a founding editor of the Journal of Iranian Studies; a past president of the Association for Iranian Studies (AIS) and of the Middle East Studies Association in North America (MESA); associate editor of the Encyclopedia of Islam and the Muslim World; and editor of Freedom of Thought Journal.

The panel will be moderated by Lerna Ekmekcioglu, Professor of History at MIT.