Understanding the Challenge of Iran Is Focus of Yale Conference

Yale Initiative for the Interdisciplinary Study of Antisemitism (YIISA) will
hold a two-part conference, "Understanding the Challenge of Iran," on April 29
in New York City and on April 30 in New Haven.

The event is free and open to the public and the media. Pre-registration is
required to attend the New York event. Email Lauren Clark:
lauren.clark@yale.edu.

"It is crucial to understand the implications of the challenge that the
Iranian regime poses to democratic principles and human rights at the regional
and international levels from an analytical and scholarly perspective," says
Charles Small, director of YIISA. "The regime attempts to garner support in
its use of classical antisemitic tropes. In doing so it not only gains
legitimacy among those who fall pray to the politics of hate, but also removes
much-needed attention on the dramatic human rights abuses within Iran and the
structural removal of democratic institutions and practices. It also deflects
from the real socio-economic and developmental issues of governance that the
Middle East must face."

Conference speakers include American and international scholars and thinkers
such as Saeed Paivandi, professor of sociology at Paris-8 University; Karim
Sadjadpour, director of the Carnegie Iran Initiative; Roya Boroumand,
executive director of the Abdorrahman Boroumand Foundation for the Promotion
of Human Rights and Democracy in Iran, and others.

The conference will open at the Yale Club of New York City, 50 Vanderbilt Ave,
at 6:45 p.m. on April 29. Following dinner, experts in the field will speak
and take questions. Panelists are David Menashri, director of the Center for
Contemporary Iranian Studies, Tel Aviv University; journalist Mehrangiz Kar,
outspoken Iranian women's rights spokesperson; and Irwin Cotler, professor of
human rights at McGill University and former Minister of Justice and Attorney
General of Canada.

On April 30, the conference will resume at Yale in Linsly-Chittenden Hall,
Room 101, 63 High St., at 9 a.m. Morning panels are titled "The Iranian Regime
and Human Rights" and "The Regime: Ideology, Politics and International
Terror." Afternoon panels will focus on "Iranian Society and 'The Other'" and
"International Law: Terror and Incitement to Genocide."

For more information and a complete schedule, go to www.yale.edu/yiisa.

Partial list of speakers

Hooshang Amirahmadiis a professor of urban planning and policy development and
director of the Center for Middle Eastern Studies (CMES) at Rutgers
University. He is founder and president of the American Iranian Council, the
founder of the Center for Iranian Research and Analysis and president of
Caspian Associates, Inc. He has served as chair and graduate director of his
department at the Bloustein School and as the University Coordinator of the
Hubert Humphrey Fellowship Program. He was a candidate for president in the
ninth presidential election in Iran in June 2005, but the conservative and
religious Guardian Council disqualified him because of his American
citizenship and democratic platform. Amirahmadi is the author of four books,
editor of 10 books and 16 conference proceedings on US-Iran relations.

Andrew Apostolou is the associate director of programs, Saban Center,
Brookings Institute. He formerly worked for The Economist Group's Economist
Intelligence Unit (EIU). Before joining the EIU, he was a freelance researcher
on Central Asia and the Middle East for the Royal Institute of International
Affairs. He completed his doctorate at St. Antony's College, Oxford
University.

Roya Boroumand holds a history doctorate from the Sorbonne (France) and
specializes in contemporary Iran. She is the co-founder and executive director
of the Abdorrahman Boroumand Foundation for the Promotion of Human Rights and
Democracy in Iran and is currently working on an Internet-based project to
promote human rights education in Iran. She has co-authored several articles
on the political situation in Iran and has researched and written about women
rights and family law in North Africa.

Patrick Clawsonis the deputy director for research at The Washington Institute
for Near Policy. He is the author or editor of 24 books and monographs,
including "Eterman Iran: Continuity and Chaos" (with Michael Rubin) and
"Getting Ready for a Nuclear-Ready Iran" (Strategic Studies Institute of the
U.S. Army War College, 2005, edited with Henry Sokolski). Clawson has
authored more than 70 articles, appears frequently on television and radio,
and has published op-ed articles in major newspapers.

Irwin Cotler serves as a Canadian Member of Parliament and is the former
Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada. As Minister of Justice, he
tabled Canada's first-ever National Justice Initiative Against Racism, in
parallel with the government's National Action Plan Against Racism. Cotler has
worked with a group of international jurists to indict Iranian President
Ahmadinejad for incitement to genocide under the UN Charter and the Genocide
Convention. A professor, scholar and lawyer, he is a professor of human rights
law (on leave) at McGill University.

Gregory Gordonis an assistant professor of law at the University of North
Dakota. Previously he worked with the Office of the Prosecutor for the
International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, the first international
post-Nuremberg prosecutions of radio and print media executives for incitement
to genocide. In 2003, he joined the Criminal Division's Office of Special
Investigations, where he helped investigate and prosecute Nazi war criminals
and modern human rights violators. Gordon has been featured on C-SPAN, NPR and
Radio France International as an expert on war crimes prosecution and has
lectured on that subject at the US Army JAG School and the Harry S. Truman
Presidential Museum and Library.

Malvina Halberstamhas been a professor of law at the Benjamin Cardozo School
of Law since 1976, where she specializes in international law, terrorism and
criminal procedure. Halberstam is a member of Cardozo's founding faculty and
served as a counselor on international law for the US Department of State,
Office of the Legal Advisor. As counselor, she supervised the State
Department's comments on what became the "Restatement of U.S. Foreign
Relations Law (Third)" and headed the US delegation in the negotiations on the
Convention for the Suppression of Unlawful Acts Against the Safety of Maritime
Navigation, adopted in Rome in 1988. She is coauthor of "Women's Legal Rights:
International Covenants an Alternative to the ERA?" She is a member of the
American Law Institute, Advisory Committee of the ABA Standing Committee on
Law and National Security and the boards of the International Association of
Jewish Lawyers and Jurists.

Liora Hendelman-Baavur is a research fellow of the Center for Iranian Studies
(CIS) at Tel Aviv University. She teaches courses in modern Iranian history
and media of the Middle East. Her dissertation focused on gender
representations in Iranian popular culture and the printed press during the
1960s and 1970s. She is a co-editor of "Iran-Pulse," overviews on Iranian
current affairs, published by the CIS. Her current research focuses on the use
of modern communication technologies in Iran.

Mehrangiz Karis an Iranian journalist and one of the most celebrated advocates
for women in Iran. In 2001, she was convicted of charges of acting against
national security and disseminating propaganda against the Islamic regime.
She was a Radcliffe Fellow at Harvard University and was also based at the
Carr Center for Human Rights Policy at Harvard'sJohn F. Kennedy School of
Government. In 2002, she received the National Endowment for Democracy's
Democracy Award, presented by First Lady Laura Bush, and also the Ludovic
Trarieux Prize in recognition of her life's work.

Meir Litvak is a senior researcher at the Center for Iranian Studies at Tel
Aviv University and a senior lecturer in its Middle Eastern History
Department. Having received his doctorate at Harvard University, Litvak
specializes in the study of Iranian history, Palestinian affairs, Arab
anti-Semitism and perceptions of the Holocaust.

David Menashri is director of the Center for Iranian Studies and professor in
the Department of Middle Eastern History at Tel Aviv University and dean of
the University's Special Programs Division. He has been a Visiting Fulbright
Scholar at Princeton and Cornell. His research focuses on the social and
political history of modern Iran, education and modernization in the Middle
East, Shi`i political thought and Central Asian affairs. Menashri is the
author of numerous books and published papers on Iranian politics.

Saeed Paivandi is a professor of sociology at Paris-8 University and is a
leading Iran expert. He is the author of "Discrimination and Intolerance in
Iran's Textbooks," a report that revealed the prejudice deeply ingrained in
the books that make up the core of Iran's school curriculum. He is one of the
few Western scholars to specialize in Iran's post-revolutionary education
system and has contributed greatly to studies in this area.

Tom Parker is the executive director of the Iran Human Rights Documentation
Center. He is the former CEO of the Halo Partnership Consulting Firm, which
has designed and executed transitional justice projects for the British
Foreign and Commonwealth Office, the United States Agency for International
Development and the Darfur Peace and Development Organization.

Michael Rubin is a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute,
senior lecturer at the Naval Postgraduate School, and editor of the Middle
East Quarterly (a publication of the Middle East Forum). Between 2002 and
2004, Rubin worked as a Country Director for Iran and Iraq in the Office of
the Secretary of Defense, from which he was seconded to the Coalition
Provisional Authority in Iraq.

Charles Small is the director for the Yale Initiative for the
Interdisciplinary Study of Antisemitism (YIISA). He received a Doctorate of
Philosophy from St. Antony's College, Oxford University. He lectures in the
Ethics, Politics & Economics Program at Yale University.

CONTACT: Gila Reinstein of Yale University, +1-203-432-1325,
gila.reinstein@yale.edu

/PRNewswire-USNewswire -- April 25/

SOURCE Yale University