Tomorrow, Dr. Haleh Esfandiari, a scholar specializing in Middle Eastern cultural and political development, will visit Davidson to address the campus on her work and experiences.
“One Woman’s Story of Captivity in Iran” will relate the incidents and implications of her 2007 imprisonment by the Irani government. She was first detained and interrogated for trying to leave the country after her passport had been stolen.
Esfiandiari claims that during subsequent questioning she was pressured into making a false confession of anti-government activities, a confession which she later withdrew. She was released after 110 days of solitary confinement in Evin Prison.
Esfiandiari is the Director of the Middle East Program at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, D.C., where she received that position after serving as a fellow from 1995-1996.
She is the author of “My Prison, My Home: One Woman’s Story of Captivity in Iran,” forthcoming from Harper Collins Publishers this month, as well as “Reconstructed Lives: Women and Iran’s Islamic Revolution” (1997).
Esfiandiari served as the Deputy Secretary General of the Women’s Organization of Iran and has also worked at Princeton University, where she served as a professor of Persian language and literature, and is the recipient of a MacArthur Foundation Grant.
Esfiandiari is visiting Davidson with the sponsorship of the World Affairs Council of Charlotte and in response to the invitation of Anna Van Hollen ’12, who worked with Dr. Esfiandiari at the Woodrow Wilson Center last summer.
“I think this is a really special opportunity for students because Haleh’s story is so unique,” Van Hollen said. “Her story of being imprisoned in her home country is as informative as it is moving. Every time you turn on the news these days there are people talking about Iran, but it is really rare that you hear from someone that has actually grown up there or actually been imprisoned there and Haleh has done both.”
The lecture will take place in the C. Shaw Smith 900 room at 5:30 p.m. and is free and open to the public.
