Conferences - Building Bridges Between the United States and Iran

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Sponsored by Ilex Foundation and Search for Common Ground. Washington, DC. Monday, April 27, 2000. Text on this page originally appeared on Search for Common Ground's web site.

This conference marked the first time that the "dialogue of civilizations" between the United States and Iran, which was called for by President Khatami in 1998 and endorsed by President Clinton, came to Capitol Hill. Hosted by Congressman Bob Ney, a conservative Republican who taught English as a young man in Iran, the conference expanded upon the progress being made in building bridges between the US and Iran, both through people-to-people citizen diplomacy and through official channels.

Renowned Iranian film director Dariush Mehrjui discussed film as a medium for creating common ground, and his film Leila was shown at the Smithsonian’s Freer Gallery. The conference also provided a rare and special opportunity to hear Dr. Hossein Elahi-Ghomshei, one of the most popular speakers in Iran on theology, religion and mysticism. His speeches and talks are regularly made into audio cassettes and have become a part of popular culture in Iran.

The event, which was free and open to the general public, featured several other expert panelists in U.S.-Iran engagement, philosophy, history, and culture. Details on the conference, including the program, speakers and titles of papers presented, follow.

Conference Program, Participants, and Topics

Click here to jump down to Participant Biographies.

Monday, April 17, 2000

Welcome
John Marks, President of Search for Common Ground; and Congressman Bob Ney (R-OH).

Expanding the Dialogue
Ambassador (ret.) William Miller
Ambassador (ret.) Mohammad Mahallati

Panel One: Culture in Iran Today
Chair, Olga Davidson, Associate Professor, Brandeis University.
Professor Dr. Mojtaba Sadria, Faculty of Policy Studies, Chuo University, Tokyo
Dariush Mehrjui, Film Director
Godfrey Cheshire, Film Editor and Senior Critic, New York Press

Click here for QuickTime movie clips of excerpts of talks given by Professor Davidson, Professor Mojtaba Sadria, Dariush Mehrjui, and Godfrey Cheshire.

Panel Two: Howard Baskerville, An American Revolutionary
Co-sponsored by the American-Iranian Council
Chair: John Radsan, Search for Common Ground/AIC
Professor Charles Kurzman, UNC-Chapel Hill
Robert Burgener, Howard Baskerville researcher and historian
Harold Josif, Former U.S. Consul in Tabriz

Panel Three: Philosophy
Chair: Ambassador (ret.) Mohammad Mahallati
Dr. Hossein Elahi-Ghomshei, Professor of Theology, Tehran University
Dr. Coleman Barks, Professor Emeritus, University of Georgia
Rev. Sidney Griffith, S.T., Catholic University

Panel Four: Engagement between Iranians and Americans
Chair: Ambassador (ret.) William Green Miller
Ambassador (ret.) Bruce Laingen, former Chargé d’Affaires in Iran, head of American Academy of Diplomacy
Ambassador (ret.) Mohammad Mahallati

Closing Remarks
Congressman Bob Ney (R-OH)
John Marks

Screening of Mehrjui's Leila
Smithsonian Freer Gallery of Art
Dariush Mehrjui, Director
Godfrey Cheshire, Film Editor and Senior Critic, New York Press
Details on film below.

Participant Biographies

The Speakers

Congressman Bob Ney (R-OH). Congressman Bob Ney represents Ohio's 18th Congressional district. Elected to the U.S. Congress in 1994, Ney is an ardent supporter of improved relations with Iran. He has had several articles on US-Iran relations published in the Washington Post and various Iranian magazines. Congressman Ney taught English in Iran in 1978-1979.

John Marks, President of Search for Common Ground. Mr. Marks founded Search for Common Ground in 1982 and the European Centre for Common Ground in Brussels in 1995. Mr. Marks served as a Foreign Service officer in Washington, DC and Vietnam, as executive assistant for foreign policy to the late Senator Clifford Case, as a fellow at Harvard's Institute of Politics, and as a visiting scholar at Harvard Law School.

Ambassador (ret.) William Miller is a Senior Consultant with Search for Common Ground. He was a Foreign Service Officer in Iran from 1959-1962, and was named Ambassador to Iran before the 1979 revolution, a post he never served. He was Ambassador to Ukraine from 1993-1998, and is a past Fellow at the Woodrow Wilson Center. Amb. Miller has also taught at Harvard and Fletcher Universities, and written numerous articles on Iran, the Middle East, and civil society.

Ambassador (ret.) Mohammad Mahallati is a Senior Consultant with Search for Common Ground. He served as the Iranian Ambassador to the U.N. from 1987-1989, during which time he helped end the Iran-Iraq war. He has taught at Columbia, Georgetown, Yale, and Princeton Universities. Currently, he is a Fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, the Middle East Institute, and Harvard University.

Olga Davidson, Associate Professor, Brandeis University. Chairman, ILEX. Dr. Davidson served as chair of the concentration in Islamic and Middle Eastern Studies at Brandeis in 1992-1997. Her publications include Poet and Hero in the Persian Book of Kings, and Comparative Literature and Classical Persian Poetry. Professor Davidson received her BA from Boston University and her Ph.D. from Princeton University.

John Radsan is a consultant to Search for Common Ground's proposed exchange of U.S. and Iranian business leaders. In addition, for the American Iranian Council, Mr. Radsan is the Director of Special Projects, which includes a plan to make a documentary movie and to conduct seminars on the life of Howard Baskerville. As a Harvard Law School graduate, Mr. Radsan also serves as Of Counsel at the international law firm of Afridi & Angell.

Panel One: Culture in Iran Today

Dr. Mojtaba Sadria is a Professor on the Faculty of Policy Studies at Chuo University in Tokyo. He has taught and done research in a number of European countries and North America. He spent 15 years teaching in Japan and has published over 50 books and articles. His primary area of interest is on cross-cultural relations.

Dariush Mehrjui, Film Director. Winner of dozens of international film awards, Mehrjui’s highly acclaimed filmography includes The Cow (1969), The Lady (1990), Sara (1992), and The Pear Tree (1998). The Cow is widely credited with launching modern Iranian cinema, in part because of Ayatollah Khomeini's enthusiasm for the film. Mr. Mehrjui studied philosophy at UCLA and is a past editor of the literary magazine Paris Review. His 1997 film Leila, winner of two major prizes at the Tehran Film Festival, was screened Monday evening at the Smithsonian’s Freer Gallery of Art (Details on film below).

Godfrey Cheshire, Film Editor and Senior Critic, New York Press. Mr. Cheshire has written extensively about the Iranian cinema, and is a regular contributor to Variety and The Independent (North Carolina). His writings on films from Iran, which many critics currently regard as the world's strongest national cinema, have appeared in The New York Times, Film Comment and other publications. He recently spent four months in Iran interviewing filmmakers and others for a forthcoming book on Iranian cinema that will be published by Faber & Faber. Mr. Cheshire is a member of the National Society of Film Critics and a past chairman of the New York Film Critics Circle.

Panel Two: Howard Baskerville, An American Revolutionary

Charles Kurzman is an assistant professor of sociology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He has written numerous articles on 20th century Iranian democracy movements, and is currently preparing a book comparing the Iranian Constitutional Revolution of 1906 -1911 with democracy movements elsewhere in the world during the same period. He has traveled to Iran twice in the past year and is trying to forge research partnerships with scholars in Iran.

Robert Burgener, Howard Baskerville researcher and historian. Mr. Burgener tracked down the original correspondence from the Presbyterian mission in Tabriz that described Baskerville’s life and death. Using additional interviews, he produced a pilot for a film to be called A Matter of Conscience. Mr. Burgener studied at the University of Madrid, Spain and University of Vienna, Austria before graduating from George Washington University in Washington, D.C.

Harold Josif, retired U.S. Foreign Service Officer. As U.S. Consul in Tabriz from 1957-1959, Mr. Josif coordinated celebrations there in April 1959 honoring Howard Baskerville on the 50th anniversary of his death.

Panel Three: Philosophy

Dr. Hossein Elahi-Ghomshei, Professor of Philosophy and Literature, Tehran University, is an international author and lecturer, expert in Persian and Western Literature and mysticism. Due to his wide ranging literary versatility, phenomenal power of memory, and in-depth understanding of English, Persian, Arabic, and Indian literature, Dr. Elahi is widely sought after as a lecturer on Eastern and Western philosophy and mysticism. He has lectured at many universities and official seminars across the world. His talk was titled "Unity of Being in the Eastern and Western Literature."

Dr. Coleman Barks, Professor Emeritus, University of Georgia. Dr. Barks taught poetry and creative writing at the University of Georgia for thirty years. In 1976 he began translating the 13th century mystic, Rumi, and in 1984 began publishing the Rumi work with Open Secret. Secret won the Pushcart Writer's Choice Award. In 1995 his Rumi translations were collected in a definitive bestselling anthology, The Essential Rumi (HarperCollins). Dr. Barks has since been featured in an hour-long segment of Bill Moyers’ PBS "Language of Life" series, as well as a 1999 PBS special "Fooling With Words." He has frequently appeared on many radio and television programs reading Rumi's poetry with musicians and dancers, and his translations of Rumi have now sold half a million copies.

Rev. Sidney Griffith S.T., Associate Professor of Early Christian Studies and Semitics at the Catholic University of America, is also its Director of Graduate Programs in Early Christian Studies. An ordained Roman Catholic priest, Rev. Griffith has published widely on early Christianity and the relationship between Christianity and Islam. Among the topics he has addressed are Islamic and Christian images and icons, the view of Islam during the Abbasid Period, and Christian and Muslim martyrdom. He is a consultant editor to Islam and Christian-Muslim Relations, and a member of the editorial board of the Bulletin of the Royal Institute for Inter-Faith Studies and Medieval Encounters: Jewish, Christian and Muslim Culture in Confluence and Dialogue (published by E.J. Brill, Leiden and New York). Rev. Griffith was a Visiting Professor at Princeton Theological Seminary and a past Fellow at the Dumbarton Oaks Center for Byzantine Studies.

Panel 4: Engagement Between Iranians and Americans

Ambassador (ret.) Bruce Laingen, former US Chargé d'Affaires in Tehran and the senior American held during the hostage crisis. Amb. Laingen currently heads the American Academy of Diplomacy, a Washington-based organization.

The Film Leila

Mehrjui's film Leila, a melodrama that recounts the problems a young upper-class couple face when the wife finds that she is infertile and the husband is forced by his mother to take a second wife. Since its premiere at the 1997 Fajr Film Festival, it has continued to polarize audience response along gender and class lines. In an instance of life imitating art, the two leading actors were married in the fall of 1998. The film was shown at Meyer Auditorium, Freer Gallery of Art, 12th and Independence Ave., SW. Following the film, Dariush Mehrjui and Godfrey Cheshire discussed the film and hosted a Q &A session.

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