Chapter One (Chapter Two)
By Way of Introduction
At Harvard Law School, March 2006
In March 2006, the Harvard Gazette featured a story about a symposium on Iran and the future of non-proliferation regime at Harvard Law School, adorned by a color photo of three of the four speakers. They were, Matthew Bunn, the director of Kennedy School of Government’s program on “Managing the Atom,” an M.I.T. political science professor, Barry Posen, and Flynt Leverett, a former White House national security advisor. Somehow missing from the photo was the speaker identified by the event’s oversized poster as Director of NGO, Global Interfaith Peace, and former advisor to Iran’s nuclear negotiation team, Kaveh Afrasiabi, me.
Any one else may have taken issue with the Harvard paper, perhaps wondering if this were a mere case of pure neglect, or photographer’s or editor’s unfriendly choice to exclude me, but by then I was rather used to such discrepant treatments at Harvard, so I chose not to pick up the phone and inquire as to the real sources of this oddity – about a high profile event that had been sponsored by a number of programs at Harvard Law School as well as Center For International Affairs and the Belfer Center For International Relations at the Kennedy School, and was podcast live on the internet.
That oddity grew by leaps and bounds however, when I received a communication via e-mail from the chief of Harvard University Police Department, Francis Riley, informing me of the following: “Dear Mr. Afrasiabi: This is to inform you that there is a trespass order against you and you are barred from entering the campus or any property belonging to Harvard University and if you do so you will be subject to arrest.” That came on March 19th.
”What did you say at the lecture to cause this?” Mike Wallace my old friend at CBS’ “60 Minutes” reacted half-jokingly after I forwarded Riley’s email and attached the file on the symposium, “I thought your troubles at Harvard were over.” Obviously not.
“Bizarre, absolutely preposterous,” reacted more harshly another friend, Noam Chomsky, after I wrote to him that I was baffled how I could one day be a keynote speaker at a university-wide symposium and then the next day banned and threatened with arrest if I stepped foot inside not only Harvard but any property that Harvard owned, even those that the university did not occupy and had leased out throughout Cambridge and beyond?!
But, Wallace and Chomsky were not the only ones expressing their surprise, at the fact that one day Harvard would roll out the red carpet for me and then the next day ban me; several faculty at the Kennedy School of Government – Joseph Nye, Stephen Walt, Steven Miller, Matthew Bunn, and Graham Allison – also showed their support for me by sending emails to the higher ups at Harvard. “Afrasiabi has made serious contribution in the area of Iran studies,” Nye’s email to the Dean at the Kennedy School read in parts. Yet, somehow, all their effort came to naught and that meant I could no longer be a part of the Harvard program on nuclear non-proliferation as I had been for the past six months. “I am sorry Kaveh, we did all we could and even had a meeting with the Dean, but looks like you have powerful enemies at Harvard and they prevailed,” Nye told me when I went to his office and I aired my frustration at the unfair and cruel mistreatment displayed toward me at Harvard.
At Holyoke Center, July 2006
After several months of reluctantly complying with the strict orders of police chief Riley, right after the July 4th celebration, when one gets a heavy dosage of American ideology about liberty and the pursuit of happiness, I felt it was safe to engage in a minor transgression by venturing inside the building at Harvard Square known as the Holyoke Center and purchase a book at the bookstore of Harvard University Press. That was not to be, for I was in the middle of transaction with the cashier when a somber voice from behind calling my name froze me. It was a Harvard campus police officer in his mid 30s; he politely took me a corner and asked what my name was and when I answered he turned around and whispered in his walki talki nodding his head. “Okay, will do,” he said after receiving instruction.
“You can’t be here. You must leave this premise immediately or I have orders to arrest you?” He ordered me.
”Arrest me, for what? I am here to buy a book?”
”You can buy it somewhere else,” the officer replied.
“I can’t,” I said and then pointed at the book, titled Islam and Ecology, “this is published by Harvard University Press and this is the only place where they sell them.”
”Sorry not my business. You can order it online, can’t you?” He asked with a tone conveying impatient smarts.
“I suppose I could,” I answered, “but then I couldn’t get the discount.”
The officer was tiny bit puzzled and I let the middle age cashier witnessing this unexpected conversation furnish the explanation. “You see. He is one of the authors of this book, gets twenty percent discount.”
”I see,” he said and then firmly pointed me toward the door, “sorry I’ve got my orders. You either leave now or I have to arrest you for trespassing, the choice is yours.” I chose freedom instead. After all, I had a distinct sense of de ja vu about this: a few years back, I had been stopped at the steps of Harvard’s Divinity library by a Harvard guard who escorted me out to the street without the slightest listening to my explanation that I was on my way to pick up Harvard Theological Review, which had published my article on post-modern Christian theology. At least I was able to get inside Harvard intellectually even if I couldn’t physically. Well, life is full of paradoxes.
On CNN, September 2006
Irrespective of the no-trespass order and the less than pleasant experience at the Holyoke Center, I found myself defending Harvard – in the opinion page of Boston Globe and on CNN-affiliate program hosted by Glen Beck. The issue at question was whether or not Iran’s former president, Mohammad Khatami, had the right to give a public lecture at Harvard (on the subject of “ethics of tolerance in the age of violence”). The wealth of voices opposed to Khatami’s presence at Harvard included a number of local and national pundits, as well as the Massachusetts governor, Mitt Romney, who had attracted national attention by refusing to provide state security for the visiting Khatami, who had been at the United Nations prior to coming to Boston in light of his appointment by the UN Secretary General, Kofi Anan, as a distinguished member of an “Alliance of Civilizations.”
A few days earlier, in my opinion column in Boston Globe, titled “Governor’s got it wrong on Khatami,” I had defended Harvard’s decision to invite Khatami and had pointed out that whatever his shortcomings, the moderate Iranian ex-president was nonetheless the founder of the idea of “dialogue among civilizations” and a globally-respected voice for tolerance, listening, and reciprocity.
Beck, the right-wing host of the CNN’s Headline News talk show, would have none of that and sarcastically referred to me alternatively as “former Harvard scholar,” “former associate of president Khatami” and also “Khatami boy” and went on a rampage against Iran’s bloodthirsty mullahs and so on, without letting me a moment’s time to respond without constantly cutting me off rudely. Finally I had it and interrupted him and said, “you don’t let me talk. If you want to do all the talking, why bother inviting guests to your program.” Beck was unprepared for this, paused for a moment and then with a nervous grin responded, “you’re right, thank you for coming, good bye.” I instantly wondered what his reaction would be if I told his global audience that I myself was banned from Harvard, and that the mighty Harvard was guilty of a serious violation of my human rights, as far as I was concerned no less serious than the serious transgressions that Beck was vilifying the “Islamofascists” for.
“What an irony?” Mike Wallace, whom I had alerted about my appearance on the Beck show, loudly wondered on the phone a few days later, “you would think they’d learn by now!” I didn’t bother asking him what he meant by learn? Did he mean manners, respect for others, respect for human rights? I didn’t because the answer was self-evident.
Too bad for Beck though. His bosses at CNN headquarter subsequently reviewed the tape after receiving a formal complaint from me and found in my favor, informing me in their letter that they regretted the fact that I was not given adequate time to express my point of view and that they found the behavior of Mr. Beck “unacceptable.”
Next day at Harvard’s Kennedy School
Somehow I had deluded myself into thinking that being on the very short list of Mr. Khatami’s own guests at his much-anticipated talk would suffice to get around the no-trespass order, not to mention all the pro-Harvard rallying that I had managed the preceding days on the (inter)national media and in the oped page of Boston Globe. My dear friend and colleague, Abbas Maleki, who was a visiting research fellow at the Kennedy School and a principal organizers of Khatami’s talk, approached me on the steps of the building and with a sad voice said, “I am very sorry Kaveh. But they objected to your name on the list.” “Who is they?” “The Harvard police. I am very sorry.” “That’s ok, don’t worry about it. I have seen a lot worse things from them than this, trust me.” Maleki saw that I was genuinely sad and patted me on the shoulder and said, “but you’ve got your interview with him in a couple of hours, and you will be at the private reception on Beacon Hill, so don’t mind those people.”
He was right. So, instead of attending Khatami’s lecture, I went to a nearby café and prepared my interview with Khatami, that took place at Khatami’s hotel room at Charles Hotel and subsequently appeared in UN Chronicle.
I had known Khatami from my days of helping with the UN’s program on Dialogue Among Civilizations in 2000-2001, which has been initiated by Khatami at his UN speech in 1999. In addition to assisting the UN’s Representative on Dialogue, Giandomenico Picco, on organizing various conferences around the world on this subject, including one in New York, another in Tokyo, another in Caracas, etc., I had also been the chairman of the week-long World Youth Festival on Dialogue Among Civilizations, which took place in Vilnius, Lithuania, in Summer 2000, a lovely and enchanting event that brought together hundreds of young people from some 66 countries, mostly from Africa, for the purpose of cross-cultural understanding. Not only that, I had traveled with Khatami to Berlin, Madrid, and Asghabad, Turkmenistan, in my capacity as an unofficial observer, often publishing the results of each trip on a popular Iranian website, www.payvand.com.
“So. What did you think of the lecture?” Mr. Khatami asked me and I simply said, “wonderful, very enlightening” thus hiding the fact that I was not able to hear him. But I had previewed the text of his speech and my comment was not entirely disingenuous.
In comparison, making it the lovely home of Olga Davidson, an avid collector of Iranian art, was not entirely problem-free and I was informed by an aide to Khatami that there had been “objections” to my invitation and a number of people at Harvard had bluntly said that they would not go if I showed up. This conversation grabbed the attention of Khatami and he told his aide, “it’s their choice. If they don’t want to, that’s their choice.” I was truly humbled by his stern reaction, though at the same instant tried to imagine the wide faces of those snobby Harvardites who had blacklisted me for years and now were being rebuffed by none other than a former president of Iran.
The small crowd at Davidson’s multiplex apartment included one of Harvard’s cronies who taught at Boston College, a psychology professor by the name of Ali Banuazizi, who had dutifully performed his duty on behalf of my adversaries at Harvard by denying my complaint against them to the Ethics Committee of a professional association, the Middle East Studies Association. A couple of years earlier, in my civil right law suit against Harvard, I had taken the deposition of Banuazizi and he had stated under oath that he had excused himself from the ethics committee because he felt “uncomfortable since I knew both you and the others at Harvard.” But, after discovery from that association, I had come to learn that it was a lie and the respected professor Banuazizi had cast a negative vote against my complaint. I had remained silent about this until at the plush buffet dinner that night, when I approached him standing next to his wife and after exchanging the usual niceties said to him, “by the way I inquired from the ethics committee and found out that you lied in your deposition. You didn’t excuse yourself from my case, did you? ” Banuazizi was speechless and I turned around and left his company before he had a chance to come up with more duplicitous lies to whitewash his complicity with the regime of repression imposed on me by my powerful enemies at Harvard who had done their best to destroy my chances in the academia and beyond. My only consolation was that I had single handedly taken them to court, a jury trial in a federal court, then to the appeals court, and all the way to the altars of the United States Supreme Court.
“Don’t worry Kaveh. You will always be the man who took Harvard to the US Supreme Court,” my friend and one-time doctoral dissertation advisor, historian Howard Zinn, once told me, informing me that as far as he knew that has never happened before in Harvard’s 300 plus years history. Well, that’s something to be proud of, even though it does not quite cover the bills, and irrespective of the magnitude of sacrifice and pain, particularly of the bias, discrimination, and double standards of not only the mighty liberal institution but also the great American justice system, that despite its sound and fury about equal justice, simply could not deliver whenever push came to shove in my long, lonely legal battle with the Goliath also known as the Beacon on the Hill >>> Chapter Two
