Jewels of Allah: The Untold Story of Women in Iran

Jewels of Allah: The Untold Story of Women in Iran
2015-07-01 23:00 - 2015-07-02 01:00 UTC | Harvard Bookstore, 1256 Mass Ave, Cambridge, MA 02138
Please join us at the Harvard Bookstore for a conversation with author Nina Ansary and Harvard Professor of Biology Pardis Sabeti.

What if you looked beyond the images of Iran that flicker past on the nightly news to glimpse inside the intimate struggles of people trying to live authentic lives in spite of oppression?

Join Dr. Nina Ansary and Dr. Pardis Sabeti in a conversation about "The Untold Story of Women in Iran,” shattering long encrusted stereotypes, highlighting the accomplishments of powerful female voices in Iran’s past and present, and sharing the triumph of the human spirit over oppression.

The discussion will be followed by a Q&A with the author and a book signing.

Nina Ansary, PhD
Dr. Nina Ansary is a historian and expert in the women’s movement in Iran. Born in Tehran, Iran, Dr. Ansary left her country of birth at the onset of the 1979 Islamic Revolution. Dr. Ansary was recently honored as one of the 21 Leaders of the 21st Century by the award-winning news website Womens ENews and is one of the top social influencers on Iran on Twitter. She is the author of the upcoming book, The Jewels of Allah: The Untold Story of Women in Iran which shatters the stereotypical assumptions about women in Iran and highlights the accomplishments of powerful female voices in Iran’s past and present. Nina Ansary regularly contributes to The Daily Beast, Women's ENews, the BBC, the Middle East Eye and the Huffington Post and is an active member of several national organizations dedicated to public policy, educational, charitable, and gender-related causes. For more information, visit: www.ninaansary.com. She can be found on Twitter @drninaansary or on facebook.com/ninaansary.

Pardis Sabeti, MD, DPhil
Born in Tehran, Dr. Pardis Sabeti is an Associate Professor at the Center for Systems Biology and Department of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology at Harvard University and the Department of Immunology and Infectious Disease at the Harvard School of Public Health, and an Institute Member of the Broad Institute of Harvard and MIT. Dr. Sabeti is a computational geneticist with expertise developing algorithms to detect genetic signatures of adaption in humans and the microbial organisms that infect humans. Dr. Sabeti completed her undergraduate degree at MIT, her graduate work at Oxford University as a Rhodes Scholar, and her medical degree summa cum laude from Harvard Medical School as a Soros Fellow. She is a World Economic Forum (WEF) Young Global Leader and a National Geographic Emerging Explorer, and was named a TIME magazine ‘Person of the Year’ as one of the Ebola fighters. Her awards include the Smithsonian American Ingenuity Award for Natural Science, the Vilcek Prize for Creative Promise, the NIH Innovator Award, the Packard Fellowship, and an Ellis Island Medal of Honor. She has served on the MIT Board of Trustees and the National Academy of Sciences Committee on Women in Science, Medicine, and Engineering.

Contact: Liz Flanagan, elizabethflanagan@fas.harvard.edu
