Concerned Scholars and Intellectuals Protest the Imprisonment of Kian Tajbakhsh

By Anonymous

WE AT SOCIAL RESEARCH: AN INTERNATIONAL QUARTERLY OF THE SOCIAL SCIENCES, based at the New School for Social Research, together with our readers and colleagues worldwide, are deeply distressed by the arrest and imprisonment of our highly respected author and colleague, Kian Tajbakhsh. Rather than remain in the United States, his commitment to Iran, for which he has great affection, impelled him to return to Iran a half-decade ago to contribute to the country’s intellectual life and social development. There, his work on urban studies, public policy, and political participation have enhanced his already strong international reputation as a social scientist of great talent and achievement. His fine scholarship has made great contributions to an understanding of Iranian society, and has increased the possibility of cooperation across borders.

We thus urgently call on the government of Iran to end the unjustified detainment of Dr. Tajbakhsh.

Signatories include:

Arjun Appadurai, John Dewey Distinguished Professor in the Social Sciences, The New School for Social Research, New York, NY, USA

Timothy Garton Ash, Professor of European Studies, University of Oxford; Isaiah Berlin Professorial Fellow, St Antony’s College, Oxford, UK

Noam Chomsky, Institute Professor (retired), MIT, Cambridge, MA, USA

Juan R. I. Cole, Professor of History, University of Michigan; President, Global Americana Institute, Ann Arbor, Michigan, USA

Sir Bernard Crick, Professor, University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, Scotland, United Kingdom

Paul R. Ehrlich, Bing Professor of Population Studies, President, Center for Conservation Biology, Department of Biological Sciences, Stanford University, Stanford, CA, USA

Shepard Forman, Director, Center on International Cooperation, New York University, New York, USA

Kurt Gottfried, Professor of Physics Emeritus, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY, USA

Jan T. Gross, Norman B. Tomlinson ’16 and ’48 Professor of War and Society, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ, USA

Adam Habib, Professor, Executive Director, Democracy and Governance, Human Science Research Council, South Africa

Shireen Hassim, Professor, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa

Agnes Heller, Professor of Philosophy, The New School for Social Research; Member of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences , New York, NY, USA

Edward Hirsch, President, John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, New York, NY, USA

Eva Hoffman, Writer and Visiting Professor, Hunter College, New York, NY, USA

Stanley Hoffmann, Buttenwieser University Professor, Center for European Studies, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, USA

Nicholas Humphrey, Professor, London School of Economics, London, UK

Beata Huszka, PhD Candidate, Central European University, Budapest, Hungary

Jeffrey Isaac, James H. Rudy Professor and Chair of Political Science, Indiana University, Bloomington, Indiana, USA

Bob Kerrey, President, The New School, New York, NY, USA

Fatos Lubonja, Writer, journalist, human rights activist, Tirana, Albania

Fyodor Lukyanov, Editor, Russia in Global Affairs Journal, Moscow, Russia

Avishai Margalit, George F. Kennan Professor, Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, NJ, USA

Edna Ullmann-Margalit, Director, Center for the Study of Rationality, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel

Marc Mauer, Executive Director, The Sentencing Project, Washington DC, USA

Adam Michnik, Historian and writer, Warsaw, Poland

Okello Oculi, Executive Director, Africa Vision 525, Abuja, Nigeria

Claus Offe, Professor, Humboldt University and Hertie School of Governance, Berlin, Germany

Isaack O. Otieno, Political Scientist, Democratic Governance Expert, Senior Project Officer, Democratic Governance Office, CIDA, Kenya

Samantha Power, Anna Lindh Professor of the Practice of Global Leadership, John F. Kennedy School, Cambridge, MA, USA

Ulrich K. Preuss, Professor, Hertie School of Governance, Berlin, Germany

Kenneth Prewitt, Carnegie Professor of Public Affairs, Columbia University, New York, NY, USA

Arthur Ripstein, Professor of Law and Philosophy, University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario, Canada

Jonathan Schell, Harold Willens Peace Fellow, The Nation Institute, The Nation Magazine, New York, NY, USA

Aristide R. Zolberg, Walter Eberstadt Professor of Political Science, The New School for Social Research, New York, NY, USA

Copyright New School for Social Research, Graduate Faculty Summer 2007

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