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Uprising in Iran: Exploring the Deeper Meanings
August 4, 2009
Ali Ferdowsi
Chair, History and Political Science Department
Notre Dame de Namur University
Dr. Ali Ferdowsi is an Iranian American political scientist who spends each summer in Iran, researching the latest political dynamics there. This year's visit put Dr. Ferdowsi right in the middle of the most significant political development since the Iranian revolution 30 years ago.
A native of Iran, Dr. Ferdowsi was in Iran from the first week of June through the first week of July, watching and participating in the election and the protests that followed it. We will discuss, among other things, why an election that was poised to be a routine exercise in a limited democracy turned into a mass protest against a fraudulent election which met with a bloody response by the security and paramilitary forces. What do the protesters want? What does this mean for the future of the Islamic Republic? And what can we do as Americans to side with the Iranian people in their century old yearning for democracy and human rights?
While most mainstream media reporting -- where it was able to function at all -- focused on the capital city of Tehran, Dr. Ferdowsi traveled throughout the country, witnessing the "green wave" uprising in cities and towns large and small.
After receiving his Ph.D. in sociology from the University of Pennsylvania in 1985, Ali Ferdowsi studied as a post-doctoral fellow in the Graduate Program in Demography at the University of California, Berkeley. He taught for three years as a visiting professor in the Department of Middle Eastern Studies at Tokyo University for Foreign Studies in Japan.
After working for five years as an International Specialist for NHK (Japan Broadcast Corporation), he returned to the United States in 1997 and began teaching in the Department of History and Political Science at Notre Dame de Namur University.
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