The Hagop Kevorkian Center is proud to announce that from March 19-April 30, 2018, Trita Parsi, the Founder and President of the National Iranian American Council (NIAC), will join us as Kevorkian’s Spring 2018 Practitioner-in-Residence.  During his time with us, he will lead a special workshop open to graduate students at the Hagop Kevorkian Center and others by permission and as space allows.

Workshop Description: Is Iran misunderstood? Accused of being the number one state sponsor of terror, revolutionary Iran has been an anti-status quo power in the eyes of its rivals since its inception. Through mischief and destabilization, Tehran has sought to establish its hegemony in the Middle East, Iran’s detractors in Washington, Riyadh and Tel Aviv assert. But how does it look from Tehran’s perspective? Is Iran obsessed with resurrecting the ancient Persian empire – albeit with an Islamic disguise – or is the majority Persian/Shia power playing defense in a region dominated by Arabs and/or Sunnis? This workshop will try to put the students in the shoes of Iran and experience the Iranian geopolitical predicament from Tehran’s perspective. The workshop will meet 4 times (plus a final panel discussion), and review specific regional crises or episodes in US-Iran tensions from the perspective of Tehran, while seeking to answer the question: What does Iran really want?

Meeting Times/Dates: Mondays, March 19, April 2, April 9, and April 16, 5pm-7pm, with a final event on Monday, April 30, 2018.

Location: Hagop Kevorkian Center's Richard Ettinghausen Library, 255 Sullivan Street at Washington Square South.  

Trita Parsi is an award winning author and the 2010 recipient of the Grawemeyer Award for Ideas Improving World Order. He is the founder and president of the National Iranian American Council and an expert on US-Iranian relations, Iranian foreign politics, and the geopolitics of the Middle East. He is the author of Treacherous Alliance: The Secret Dealings of Iran, Israel and the United States (Yale University Press 2007), for which he conducted more than 130 interviews with senior Israeli, Iranian and American decision-makers. Treacherous Alliance is the silver medal winner of the 2008 Arthur Ross Book Award from the Council on Foreign Relations. Parsi's second book A Single Roll of the Dice - Obama's Diplomacy with Iran (Yale University Press) was released early 2012 and was selected by Foreign Affairs journal as the Best Book of 2012 on the Middle East.  ​​His latest book - Losing an Enemy: Obama, Iran and the Triumph of Diplomacy (Yale University Press, 2017) - reveals the behind the scenes story to the historic nuclear deal with Iran. ​Parsi was born in Iran but moved with his family at the age of four to Sweden in order to escape political repression in Iran. His father was an outspoken academic who was jailed by the Shah and then by the Ayatollah. He moved to the United States as an adult and studied foreign policy at Johns Hopkins’ School for Advanced International Studies where he received his Ph.D.  ​He founded NIAC to provide a non-partisan, non-profit organization through which Iranian-Americans could participate in American civic life. NIAC is a vocal proponent of dialogue and engagement between the US and Iran, which Parsi consistently has argued would enhance our national security by helping to stabilize the Middle East and bolster the moderates in Iran. ​Parsi has followed Middle East politics through work in the field and extensive experience on Capitol Hill and at the United Nations. He is frequently consulted by Western and Asian governments on foreign policy matters.  Parsi has worked for the Swedish Permanent Mission to the UN, where he served in the Security Council, handling the affairs of Afghanistan, Iraq, Tajikistan and Western Sahara, and in the General Assembly's Third Committee, addressing human rights in Iran, Afghanistan, Myanmar and Iraq. ​Parsi studied for his Doctoral thesis on Israeli-Iranian relations under Professor Francis Fukuyama at Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies. In addition to his PhD, he holds a Master's Degree in International Relations from Uppsala University and a Master's Degree in Economics from the Stockholm School of Economics. He has served as an adjunct professor of International Relations at Johns Hopkins University SAIS, George Washington University and Georgetown University, as well as an adjunct scholar at the Middle East Institute and as a Policy Fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington DC. ​He is fluent in Persian/Farsi, English, and Swedish. Parsi's articles on Middle East affairs have been published in the Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Financial Times, Jane's Intelligence Review, the Nation, The American Conservative, the Jerusalem Post, The Forward, and others. He is a frequent guest on CNN, PBS’s Newshour with Jim Lehrer, NPR, the BBC, and Al Jazeera.