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Abbas Milani is the Hamid and Christina Moghadam Director of Iranian Studies at Stanford University and a visiting professor in the department of political science. In addition, Dr. Milani is a research fellow and co-director of the Iran Democracy Project at the Hoover Institution.

Prior to coming to Stanford, Milani was a professor of history and political science and chair of the department at Notre Dame de Namur University and a research fellow at the Institute of International Studies at the University of California at Berkeley. Milani was an assistant professor in the faculty of law and political science at Tehran University and a member of the board of directors of Tehran University's Center for International Studies from 1979 to 1987. He was a research fellow at the Iranian Center for Social Research from 1977 to 1978 and an assistant professor at the National University of Iran from 1975 to 1977.

Milani received his BA in political science and economics from the University of California at Berkeley in 1970 and his PhD in political science from the University of Hawaii in 1974

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Research Fellow, Hoover Institution
abbas_milani_photo_by_babak_payami.jpg PhD

Abbas Milani is the Hamid and Christina Moghadam Director of Iranian Studies at Stanford University and a visiting professor in the department of political science. In addition, Dr. Milani is a research fellow and co-director of the Iran Democracy Project at the Hoover Institution.

Prior to coming to Stanford, Milani was a professor of history and political science and chair of the department at Notre Dame de Namur University and a research fellow at the Institute of International Studies at the University of California at Berkeley. Milani was an assistant professor in the faculty of law and political science at Tehran University and a member of the board of directors of Tehran University's Center for International Studies from 1979 to 1987. He was a research fellow at the Iranian Center for Social Research from 1977 to 1978 and an assistant professor at the National University of Iran from 1975 to 1977.

Dr. Milani is the author of Eminent Persians: Men and Women Who Made Modern Iran, 1941-1979, (Syracuse University Press, Syracuse, NY, 2 volumes, November, 2008); King of Shadows: Essays on Iran's Encounter with Modernity, Persian text published in the U.S. (Ketab Corp., Spring 2005); Lost Wisdom: Rethinking Persian Modernity in Iran, (Mage 2004); The Persian Sphinx: Amir Abbas Hoveyda and the Riddle of the Iranian Revolution (Mage, 2000); Modernity and Its Foes in Iran (Gardon Press, 1998); Tales of Two Cities: A Persian Memoir (Mage 1996); On Democracy and Socialism, a collection of articles coauthored with Faramarz Tabrizi (Pars Press, 1987); and Malraux and the Tragic Vision (Agah Press, 1982). Milani has also translated numerous books and articles into Persian and English.

Milani received his BA in political science and economics from the University of California at Berkeley in 1970 and his PhD in political science from the University of Hawaii in 1974.

Hamid and Christina Moghadam Director of Iranian Studies
Co-director of the Iran Democracy Project
CDDRL Affiliated Scholar
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Abbas Milani Hamid and Christina Moghadam Director of Iranian Studies, Visiting Professor in the Department of Political Science; Co-director of the Iran Democracy Project Speaker CDDRL Affiliated Faculty
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(excerpt) During democratization’s “third wave,” democracy ceased being a mostly Western phenomenon and “went global.” When the third wave began in 1974, the world had only about 40 democracies, and only a few of them lay outside the West. By the time the Journal of Democracy be- gan publishing in 1990, there were 76 electoral democracies (accounting for slightly less than half the world’s independent states). By 1995, that number had shot up to 117—three in every five states. By then, a critical mass of democracies existed in every major world region save one—the Middle East.1 Moreover, every one of the world’s major cultural realms had become host to a significant democratic presence, albeit again with a single exception—the Arab world.2 Fifteen years later, this exception still stands.

The continuing absence of even a single democratic regime in the Arab world is a striking anomaly—the principal exception to the global- ization of democracy. Why is there no Arab democracy? Indeed, why is it the case that among the sixteen independent Arab states of the Middle East and coastal North Africa, Lebanon is the only one to have ever been a democracy?

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In light of the ongoing ‘War on Terror’ and the occupation of Iraq, attention has turned again to how countries such as the United States and Britain can use ‘soft power’ to influence not only domestic communities but also countries in the Middle East and Central Asia. Inevitably, the role of media, whether in the form of radio, television, the internet or film, looms large in such debates. The United States, for example, has funded new radio stations such as Radio Farda and Radio Sawa in an attempt to influence Farsi- and Arabic-speaking audiences in Iran and the Arab world. The Middle East has, as a consequence of American geopolitical fears of both Islamist militancy and Iranian power projection, emerged as the critical space for such popular cultural expressions. Geopolitics, in this context, refers to the representation of the geographies of global politics, and in the context of the Middle East, such representations are rarely politically innocent. This special issue of the Middle East Journal of Culture and Communication examines the use of soft power and public diplomacy in the Middle East, the political motives behind them, their modes of operation, and their successes and failure.

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In 2009-2010, the Program on Human Rights will partner with FCE and DLCL to launch part 2 of the Contemporary History and the Future of Memory series by adding "Reconciliation" to the mission.  This series will examine scholarly and institutional efforts to create new national narratives that walk the fine line between before and after, memory and truth, compensation and reconciliation, justice and peace. Some work examines communities ravaged by colonialism and the great harm that colonial and post-colonial economic and social disparities cause.   The extent of external intervention creates discontinuities and dislocation, making it harder for people to claim an historical narrative that feels fully authentic.  Another response is to set up truth-seeking institutions such as truth commissions. Historical examples of truth commissions in South Africa, Peru, Chile, Argentina, Morocco inform more current initiatives in Canada, Cambodia, Colombia, Kenya, and the United States.  While this range of economic, social, political and legal modalities all seek to explain difficult pasts to present communities, it is not yet clear which approach yields greater truth, friendship, reconciliation and community healing.  The "History, Memory, and Reconciliation" series will explore these issues.

The series will have its first event in February 2010. Multiple international scholars are invited.  

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Evgeny Morozov is a Yahoo! fellow at Georgetown University's Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service Yahoo! fellow at Georgetown University's Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service. His presentation sought to challenge a number of assumptions that are often made about the relationship between the web, nation states and democracy.

Assumption: It is much harder to censor online content than traditional media; effective censorship is impossible
Subverting content online results in less evidence and can be done with less visibility than the subversion of traditional media like newspapers. The same tools that in the West allow filtering content for child pornography can also be used effectively to filter political content in China and Russia. Some states are finding other creative ways of censoring content online; for example Saudi Arabia recently enlisted the help of 200 ‘flaggers' to create a version of You Tube that does not include content deemed to be offensive to the cultural and moral standards of the country.

Assumption: The growth of the internet will inevitably result in the decline of the nation state
In fact, most states, including authoritarian ones, are investing in techniques to use online tools to increase their own legitimacy and spread their favored ideology. A number of recent examples were cited to highlight this:

  • China is paying web users to generate pro government content online. Dubbed the ‘50 cent party' (the amount users are paid for each positive comment) there are reported to be 280,000 active members
  • Russia currently spends more money on propaganda than it does fighting unemployment. A good example is an online viral documentary (War 08.08.08) produced after last year's war with Georgia and supposedly made using footage from cell phones confiscated from Georgian soldiers. The film became a viral sensation and helped to promote the Kremlin's version of events
  • Iranians are running blogging workshops in Qom seminaries to ensure that online discourse about religious matters doesn't get out of hand.

The internet also gives these regimes new powers to detect potential dissent earlier by monitoring blogs and forums. Using social networking sites, regimes can also glean how individuals are connected to one another and so uncover whole activist networks.

Enough connectivity combined with the availability of the right devices = democracy.
Web enthusiasts are prone to over-simplify matters, assuming that sufficient provision of internet technology in countries like Iran and China will automatically result in overthrowing of dictators and the ushering in of democracy. This ignores the fact that access to information is not the same thing as activism; that protests can now be organized more easily does not mean they will be. There remains a huge role for traditional civil society organizations in moving such countries towards democracy. Evgeny warns that we need to be wary of projecting our own obsessions onto this debate - citing the way many jumped on the use of Twitter in Iran recently. In reality it is difficult to link the use of Twitter with the planning of protests.

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The lecture is preceded by a workshop at 10am in the same location. For additional information please access the DLCL site listing here.

Margaret Jacks Hall (Building 460)
Terrace Room (Room 429)

Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak University Professor Speaker Columbia University
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