On Sunday, April 14, Iranian-born Hooman Majd illuminated the misconceptions that have formed the basis of U.S.-Iran relations since 1953. Now a journalist for magazines such as The New Yorker and Newsweek, Majd is the son of an Iranian diplomat and grandson of an ayatollah, but attended school in the U.S. and the U.K. He has written several books, including The Ayatollah Begs to Differ: The Paradox of Modern Iran, and has served as a translator for Presidents Mohammad Khatami and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad during their visits to the U.S.
In the past sixty or so years, Majd said, Americans have developed a notion of Iran as a nation of religious fanatics set on destroying Israel and opposing American interests wherever those intersect their own. Supporting this image is the Western media portrayal of President Ahmadinejad as an insane ruler who has declared himself the enemy of Zionism and of Iranian gays and hopes to make Iran into a superpower to challenge the United States. Yet Ahmadinejad’s rhetoric by no means represents all of Iranian public opinion. Americans also do not understand why his aggressive stances might be appealing to some Iranians, said Majd. In his work, Majd has sought to elucidate these issues and dispel the cultural misunderstandings that have kept at bay the development of a more healthy relationship between the two nations.
American grievances against Iran include the widely misunderstood Iranian hostage crisis of the 1980s, Iran’s support for Saddam Hussein as well as terrorist organizations such as Hezbollah, and its hostility to Israel. In their turn, Iranians resent that the U.S. and the U.K. instigated the replacement of the Iranian shah by his Western-backed son during the Second World War. In 1953, the Americans returned the shah to power after a coup had set up a new nationalist prime minister. Iranians believe that the American support for the shah deprived Iran of its democratic and nationalist aspirations. After this, and especially since 1979, Americans seem to Iranians to attempt to impose their own ideology on them and to undermine Iran’s nationhood, especially by preventing Iran from developing a nuclear program, which Iranians see as an essential symbol of a nation’s sovereignty. This nationalism stems from pride in Iran’s 2500-year history as an independent nation-state and a belief that the country’s decline is rooted in Western influence. The current administration takes advantage of Iranian nationalism, claiming that it will make Iran competitive again and independent from the demands of the West.
Contrary to the belief of most Americans, said Majd, Ahmadinejad is not “the leader of Iran”; this title is given to the supreme leader of Iran, chosen by an assembly of experts whom the people vote into office. Elected to office directly by the people with the consent of the Guardian Council, the President must defer to the Supreme Leader on all issues. To enter into a significant discussion with the Iranians on the nuclear issue, then, President Obama must speak with the Supreme Leader, who has not left Iran since 1989.
As an example of the cultural and political misunderstandings between the American and Iranian administrations, Majd pointed to Ahmadinejad’s letter to President Obama congratulating him on his election in 2008. Not understanding the importance of the letter, Obama failed to respond, and the Iranians claimed that this was because the Americans are not interested in engaging significantly with the Iranians. Furthermore, said Majd, the American threat either to bomb Iran or cripple its economy if it does not comply with American demands is not conducive to a healthy discussion of the nuclear issue, and instead, Iranians feel, threaten Iran’s claim to independence.
Indeed, the recent economic sanctions have achieved an effect opposite to that intended by the Americans, crippling a middle class that might otherwise chafe under Ahmadinejad’s rule. The administration has used the sanctions as an excuse to paint American motives as primarily focused on finding an American-backed replacement for Ahmadinejad rather than only on Iranian nuclear policy. Ahmadinejad has also been able to label its critics as pro-American, discouraging more dissent.
Americans, on the other hand, tend to assume that the American political system is the best available, and that all countries should want the same civil rights in which Americans pride themselves. Yet other cultures are not so willing yet to accept the same liberties, especially in respect to gay rights. While not denying the importance of these civic liberties, Majd emphasized that each culture must approach them on its own terms over time.
The U.S., Majd concluded, should enter into a more meaningful and respectful discussion with Iran. Iranians would be willing to negotiate on many less important issues, such as its support for Syrian president, if Americans showed more respect for Iranians’ intense desire for independence. By aligning itself with popular sentiment in Iran, furthermore, the U.S. could encourage preexisting democratic movements internally, as well as a broader discussion about human rights infringements by the current Iranian regime.
[caption id="attachment_3599" align="alignright" width="300"] Putative route of the “Silk Road” in the 1st century BC.[/caption]
During a talk entitled, “The Silk Road: A New History,” Valerie Hansen, a professor of history at Yale, questioned the accepted idea of the Silk Road as a long-distance trade route between the Roman and Chinese Empires.
During her research, Hansen has looked at the history of the Silk Road through an archaeological perspective, in particular examining what she called “nonintentional sources,” everyday artifacts that have survived accidentally rather than through a process of intentional preservation such as burial.
19th-century geographer and traveler Ferdinand von Richthofen coined the term “the Silk Road” in 1877 to describe an imaginary trade route between China and the Roman Empire. Basing his ideas off of a few remarks in Pliny the Elder’s Natural History, von Richtofen claimed that traders traveled long distances on this one route to sell silks and paper as luxury commodities to the Romans. Yet no Early Roman coins have been found in China, and other evidence of this kind of large-scale trade with Rome, focused along a single route, is minimal. China did, however, trade more extensively with the Sassanian and Iranian Empires after the 6th century.
Hansen also highlighted the importance of paper rather than silk as the prized Chinese commodity. Paper seems to have been used as early as the 2nd century BCE, first simply for wrapping drugs. By 300 CE, the Chinese were using paper as a writing material and were soon exporting it to the West. In her work, Hansen tracked the use of paper on the western edges of the Chinese Empire.
Instead of a long-distance trade route, the “Silk Road” seems to have primarily acted as a tool to manage the difficulties of empire on its fringes, especially in the early period until 500 CE. For example, Xuanquan, in what is now central China, was a postal station and a resting point for envoys from the kings. These envoys conducted small-scale trading with locals, but did not carry large amounts of goods over the long distances once imagined by historians. This probably included the buying and selling of pearls and lightweight jewels, using grain, cloth, and even silk itself as a currency.
Hansen pointed to the site Turfan as an example of a typical “Silk Road” settlement on the fringes of the Chinese Empire during the pre-Islamic period until 800 CE. Located in what is now Uzbekistan, Turfan is so dry that many fragile materials have been preserved, including not only paper, but also silk, bread, and even wontons. At Turfan was also evidence that paper had become the primary means writing material, used for loan contracts; in fact, paper had become so valuable that a used paper market had sprung up at the site.
By 700, the first Chinese coins appear at archaeological sites outside of China, in what is now Tajikistan. At the same time, Chinese paper, considered more elegant than the traditional scraped leather, was moving into central Asia. At one site in Dunhuang, archaeologists found a library of 40,000 Buddhist texts, both secular and religious, in a cave; the bundles were even organized in a kind of cataloging system.
Even though the Silk Road can no longer be thought of as a route that facilitated long-distance trade and travel, there was certainly huge cultural exchange along routes similar to the Silk Road, evidenced by the spread of Buddhism from India and the influx of 35,000 Sanskrit words into China. This exchange could only happen through small-scale trading as emissaries, missionaries, and artists traveled from China to areas around the world.
[caption id="attachment_3592" align="alignright" width="204"] Freya Klier, German political activist and documentary filmmaker.[/caption]
On Wednesday, April 3, Freya Klier, a German activist and documentary film-maker, discussed the recent series of murders committed in the former GDR by a trio of self-proclaimed Neo-Nazis.
From 2000 to 2011, two men and one woman committed a series of ten murders targeted at non-Germans in east Germany. After the two men committed suicide in 2011, the woman, Beate Zschäpe, circulated DVDs that explained the series of attacks and attributed them to the trio, who called themselves the Nationalist Socialist Underground. Zschäpe is now on trial for her implication in the attacks.
Klier sought to illuminate the social environment that enabled the attacks. As a satellite of the Soviet Union after 1948, the GDR remained a right-wing extremist state long after the West turned its back on its racist Nazi past. This xenophobia was especially clear in the GDR’s immigration policy. Forced to accept Vietnamese and Mozambique refugees because of a labor shortage, the East Germans prevented these immigrants from leaving the cities where they lived, did not allow them to learn German, and forced them to have abortions if they became pregnant. Even after the break-up of the GDR, East Germany attempted to deport thousands of legal Vietnamese immigrants. Events of racial violence such as the 1992 firebombing of a dormitory for UN contract laborers in Lichtenhagen were received not only with passiveness on the part of local Germans but even with applause.
Today, xenophobia is still much more widespread in East Germany than in West Germany, with a ratio of as much as eight incidents directed towards non-Germans in the East to one in the West. The trio that called themselves the National-Socialist Underground, therefore, formed only a small part of the social fabric of this racism, which remains largely unquestioned in the former GDR. Since 1990, Klier herself has fought to change these social attitudes, visiting schools to educate young people about xenophobia and to encourage them to be active bystanders. Yet too many east Germans remain willing to witness passively acts of blatant racism and even encourage them, and the educational process is slow and difficult, especially since most students do not trust her, as an outsider to their community and stranger to its needs.
The event was sponsored by the Departments of German and Russian, Political Science, History, and Jewish Studies, the Oakley Center, the Gaudino Fund, and the Center for Foreign Languages, Literatures, and Cultures.
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