Wake Up?

Payvand.com Censors Afrasiabi's New Book On Harvard Rights Abuse

by Bagher R. Harandi on Sun Aug 08, 2010 11:27 PM PDT

 

Payvand.com Censors Afrasiabi's New Book On Harvard Rights Abuse     Kaveh Afrasiabi has published a new book called Looking For Rights At Harvard that is available on Amazon(1) and selected bookstores around the US.   It is about the gross violation of human rights of Afrasiabi who was subjected to a false and retaliatory arrest by Harvard police in 1996 on extortion charges that, it turns out, were completely fictitious and trumped up by the Harvard police in order to silence him, after Afrasiabi had complained against a professor by the name of Roy Mottahedeh to a professional association and had warned to sue him for defaming him with a fellowship committee at Oxford and with Mike Wallace of 60 Minutes. The book has a useful appendix that shows the letter of Wallace to a federal judge defending Afrasiabi and calling Mottahedeh an outright liar.     This book is a must read for all Iranians especially those who live in the United States and concerned about their minority rights in this Iran-bashing environment.   Afrasiabi is a master of English language and delivers a powerful punch at "the leopands of darkness" at Harvard as he calls them, as well as the so-called academics such as Ervand Abrahamian, Ali Banuazizi, Hamid Dabashi, Afsaneh Najmabadi, and one Hooshang Chehabi, who turned a blind eye to the abuse of his rights by the powers that be at Harvard and, worse, became willing accomplices of his McCarthyite exclusion and blacklisting that has continued until this date.  But, thankfully Afrasiabi has had a wealth of his own supporters, such as the intellectual American giants Howard Zinn, Noam Chomsky and David Mamet, as well as Mike Wallace, whose testimony on Afrasiabi's behalf constitutes one chapter of Looking For Rights At Harvard, showering him with praise; Youtube has a clip on Wallace defending Dr. Afrasiabi and calling Mottahedeh a liar (  //www.campaigniran.org/casmii/?q=afrasiabi). According to Afrasiabi, the only Iranian academic who stood up for him was former professor of political science at Boston University, Dr. Farhang Mehr, who was excluded from Harvard events after he refused to sign a petition circulated by Chehabi on Mottahedeh's behalf, when Mottahedeh and his two subordinates who framed Afrasiabi with the help of a Harvard detective were named as defendants in a federal court.  This says volumes about the honesty and integrity of Dr. Mehr, a respected leader of Zoroastrian community, and the pathetic lack of it on the part of the Iranian pseudo-intellectuals who betrayed their principles for the sake of powers that be.  It is really a shameful story that needs to be told and retold for the sake of younger generation of Iranian academics in the US and, indeed, around the world.    The book is easy to read and at times reads like a powerful detective story with sub-sections on law. Afrasiabi demonstrates the outrageous nature of "Alice-in-Wonderland" extortion story that was concocted to cause his false arrest, perjury by Ali Banuazizi on why and how he managed to drop Afrasiabi's complaint to the ethics committee of Middle East Studies Association, the betrayal by his own attorney who walked out on him on the eve of a jury trial in his law suit, the lies and shennanigans of Harvard's (Kafkaesque) attorneys and the cowardiness of judges who kept denying him justice by making sudden U-turns and reversals on key evidence, including the handwriting evidence that proved a Harvard detective had concocted the extortion story, etc.  It is truly astonshing, and heartbreaking, to learn how much pain and oppression has been applied to Afrasiabi, who had to go and become a theology student after losing his teaching due to the false arrest, and who somehow managed to publish in various Harvard publications even though he was, and still is, banned from Harvard.  Afrasiabi's book ends with a letter to President Obama under the title, Where Is My Right?, and obviously he has none, judging by the more recent news that he was brutalized by Cambridge police, that works closely with Harvard police, on the basis of a warrant for a 25 year old traffic ticket that, it turns out, he had paid and a judge dismissed the warrant and waived the fines.  I have recently visited Afrasiabi at his home in Massachusetts and can attest to the unjust head injury that Afrasiabi has suffered in the hands of Cambridge police.    What angers me, however, in addition to the gross violation of Afrasiabi's civil and human rights time and again in "the Commonwealth of Massachusetts', is the hypocrisy and silence of Iranian academics and intellectuals who are so quick to condemn any human rights violations in Iran. But, why don't they defend Afrasaibi?  Has Afrasiabi ever condoned any human rights abuse in Iran or anywhere around the world?  Hasn't he founded an NGO on interfaith dialogue and worked for so many years with the Dialogue Among Civilizations programs? Didn't he interview both Shireen Ebadi and Khatami for UN Chronicle?  Hasn't he called for eduation on the holocaust in Muslim Middle East as a "moral imperative"? Didn't he call for a coalition government after last year's presidential elections that would include members of the green movement, in Washington Post, IRNA, etc? Hasn't he written articles in Asia Times and elsewhere calling for changing the law in Iran so that no one would be stoned to death (//www.campaigniran.org/casmii/?q=afrasiabi)? Didn't he write the article "nuclear rights and human rights in Iran" reminding the government that it cannot ignore human rights while claiming to be upholding Iran's nuclear (national) rights, that the two must go hand in hand?     I could go on and on. Afrasiabi's tireless defense of Iran's national interests is reflected in several books and hundreds of articles in New York Times, Boston Globe, SF Chronicle, Christian Science Monitor, Washington Post, Council on Foreign Relations, Washington Times, LA Times, WSJ, and on and on, not to mention CNN, Al-Jazeera, PressTV, MSNBC, NPR, Voice of America, etc., making him a world-renowned personality who is nonetheless vilified in the west and by pro-Israel agents and pundits especially on the internet because he always defends Iran no matter what and no matter what the consequences and has never been afraid of the backlashes against him.  Case in point, Afrasiabi's article, "legal mists stokes the US-Iran tension" in strait of Hormuz provided the best defense of Iran's martime rights from the perspective of international law (//www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/JA15Ak02.html ).  Sadly, very few people Iranians who criticize him seem familiar with his scholarly publications, including his seminal book, After Khomeini: New Directions in Iran's Foreign Policy (westview press) that has been praised in scholarly journals as one of, if not the, best work on Iran's foreign policy; excerpts can be read here:  ( //www.questia.com/library/book/after-khomeini-new-directions-in-irans-foreign-policy-by-k-l-afrasiabi.jsp )        As a result of sheer ignorance and prejudice, the internet is filled with venomous attacks on Afrasiabi and they have done a good job at character assassinating him (for more on this please read the passionate defense of Afrasiabi against false accusations by Mr. Reza Esfandiari who resides in UK:   //www.bia2.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=6211      ).   Of course, Afrasiabi really does not need any defense and any one reading his literary treasure, of long feminist fiction Diaries and Jallad, short stories, plays and poems (my favorite ones are the ones on 9/11), available on Iranian.com can easily come to this conclusion.     I am, however, delighted that Afrasiabi has published his book on Harvard that sends serious shivers to any decent human being who prioritizes human rights.  To think that people at Harvard can be so ruthless and cruel is truly astounding and this book gives Harvard a major dent on its global reputation that will remain forever.   In addition to the narrative that is divided into 16 chapters, the book's appendix has a section on Afrasiabi's "legal poetic diary" that shows the author's humanity and poetic sensibility, e.g., "I have come to speak/ to make myself a bridge over the chasm between nations/unmoved by me the law takes it measure/looking in another direction/saying nothing/like cliffs against which/one can hurl his soundest voice/and never hear the fragments of an echo/it is home to my exile."    In conclusion, a word about censorship on Payvand.com. I and others have repeatedly contacted Mr. Ali Moayeri of Payvand.com and asked him to let the Payvand readers know about Dr. Afrasiabi's latest publication and unfortunately he has refused to even acknowledge our request.  In my opinion, the whole Iranian community in the US should know about this book and its significance that is bound to grow as time goes on.  Censoring the news about it is unethical, unprincipled, and contrary to the democratic pretensions of people who decry human rights abuse in Iran and, yet, prefer to remain silent on the horrifying ordeal of Dr. Afrasiabi in Harvard's hands for one reason or another.   I hope that even critics of Dr. Afrasiabi recognize the importance of standing up to censorship here in US against someone whom they may not like but who is nevertheless an important public figure by the sheer weight of his intellectual contributions reflected in the world's leading journals and newspapers. (1) //www.amazon.com/Looking-Rights-Harvard-Kaveh-Afrasiabi/dp/1439268835/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1280605500&sr=1-2

 

Yours truly,

 

Bagher R. Harandi

Iranians? educated?

by NotSoAnonymous (not verified) on Tue Oct 30, 2007 10:04 AM PDT