Scholars discuss the global significance of protests in Iran
Scholars discuss the global significance of protests in Iran
Students attend a Sept. 20 demonstration at Amirkabir University of Technology in Tehran
Photo: Wikimedia Commons
Manijeh Nasrabadi - assistant professor of women’s, gender and sexuality studies at Barnard College and Columbia University - spoke in a virtual discussion Tuesday, October 4th, co-hosted by Brown University’s Center for Middle East Studies and Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs in partnership with Columbia’s Middle East Institute.
The talk, called “Iran Protests: Gender, Body Politics and Authoritarianism,” also featured commentary from Kathryn Spellman Poots, on faculty at MEI at Columbia University and Aga Khan University, and Nadje Al-Ali, director of the CMES at Brown.
“The main demand of this uprising is for an end to the Islamic republic, [which] has been in place for more than four decades,” said Manijeh Nasrabadi, an assistant professor of women’s, gender and sexuality studies at Barnard College and Columbia University. “There is an overwhelming rejection from wide sections of the society of a system that is really not working — it’s not working economically, it’s not working socially, it’s not working politically. And the violent death of Mahsa Amini… resonated with the destruction of so many lives — the destruction of hope for the future, the sense that your life is viable, the sense that you can live in a way that you can thrive.”