The Iranian Gala @Harvard is a black-tie evening that honors leading community members in various fields. Founded by a group of Harvard students of Persian heritage, the Gala strives to bring together leading professionals, artists, and academics who have dedicated themselves to furthering the study, understanding, and appreciation of Iranian culture, history, and society. The vision of the Gala is to mobilize and empower the next generation of leaders in the Iranian community.
The Iranian Gala @Harvard is presented by Harvard College Iranian Association (HCIA) in partnership with Harvard alumni, faculty, and affiliates.
The Iranian Gala @Harvard is presented by Harvard College Iranian Association (HCIA) in partnership with Harvard alumni, faculty, and affiliates.
2015 Keynote
Abbas Milani, PhD
The Hamid and Christina Moghadam Director of Iranian Studies and Professor of Political Science, Stanford University; Author of The Shah (2011) Abbas Milani is the Director of the Hamid and Christina Moghadam Program in Iranian Studies, co-director of the Iran Democracy Project and a research fellow at the Hoover Institution. His expertise is U.S.-Iran relations as well as Iranian cultural, political, and security issues. Milani is the author of Modernity and Its Foes in Iran (Gardon Press, 1998); The Persian Sphinx: Amir Abbas Hoveyda and the Riddle of the Iranian Revolution (Mage, 2000); Lost Wisdom: Rethinking Persian Modernity in Iran in English (Mage 2004) and Persian (Ketob Corp. 2004); The Myth of the Great Satan (Hoover Institution Press, 2010). His latest book is The Shah (Palgrave MacMillan, 2011). Milani has also translated numerous books and articles into Persian and English. His articles have been published in journals, magazines, and newspapers including The Washington Quarterly, the Encyclopedia Iranica, the Hoover Digest, Iranshenasi, the Journal of the Middle East,Middle East Journal, and the New York Review of Books. |
2015 Honorees
Bahram Beyzai
(in absentia) Film Director Bahram Beyzai is one of Iran's most critically acclaimed filmmakers, playwrights, and scholars. He was first introduced to Western audiences at the age of 25, when his play was staged at the Festival du Theater des Nations in Paris, 1963. After years of uncompromising creative work, Beyzai became Professor and Chairman of the Dramatic Arts Department at Tehran University until the Islamic revolution. Beyzai is a leader among a generation of filmmakers in the Iranian New Wave, a Persian cinema movement that started in the late 1960s. The filmmakers share many common techniques including the use of poetic dialog, references to traditional Persian art and culture and allegorical story-telling often dealing with political and philosophical issues. Beyzai has also conducted pioneering research in Indo-Iranian mythology and his-two volume study of the history of Iranian theatre is considered the authoritative account on the subject. |
Maryam Eskandari
Founder and CEO, MIIM Designs LLC Named Huffington Post's: 10 Muslim Women Everyone Should Know Founder and CEO of MIIM Designs, architect Maryam Eskandari is in the vanguard of American mosque design, creating sacred spaces that reflect contemporary needs. Eskandari’s goal is to design “pluralistic architecture” that is inclusive of interfaith activities and built with environmentally sustainable materials. A graduate of the Aga Khan Program for Islamic Architecture at Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, she has won numerous awards. Eskandari’s study of American mosque architecture resulted in a traveling photographic exhibition, Sacred Space: (Re) Constructing the Place of Gender in the Space of Religion. Her residential, public and commercial projects range from a private prayer space in Baltimore to a secondary school campus and a community college fine arts building in Arizona. |
Roy Mottahedeh, PhD
Gurney Professor of History, Harvard University Professor Roy P. Mottahedeh is the Gurney Professor of History at Harvard University. Born in New York City on July 3, 1940, Professor Mottahedeh received his primary and secondary education in Quaker schools in New York and Pennsylvania. He graduated magna cum laude in history from Harvard College, undertook a second B.A. in Persian and Arabic at Cambridge University, and received his PhD in 1970 from Harvard University. Professor Mottahedeh was elected a Junior Fellow in the Harvard Society of Fellows and received his PhD in 1970 for a dissertation on Buyid administration which he still hopes to publish. As one of the first group of MacArthur fellows in 1981, Professor Mottahedeh was initially doubtful that such an award existed and called back for confirmation. The MacArthur award allowed him to write his second book, The Mantle of the Prophet (1985), which was a study of contemporary Iran as understood through two millennia of history. This book has been widely translated and remains in print. |
Pardis Sabeti, MD, PhD (in absentia)
Associate Professor, Organismic and Evolutionary Biology, Harvard University TIME Magazine's 2014 Person of the Year: Ebola Scientists Professor Pardis Sabeti is an Associate Professor at the Center for Systems Biology at Harvard University, Department of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology, and in the Department of Immunology and Infectious Disease at Harvard School of Public Health, and is a Senior Associate Member of the Broad Institute of Harvard and MIT. Dr. Sabeti is a computational geneticist with expertise studying genetic diversity, developing algorithms to detect genetic signatures of natural selection, and carrying out genetic association studies. She completed her undergraduate degree at MIT and her PhD at Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar, before returning to earn her medical degree from Harvard Medical School as a Soros Fellow. Dr. Sabeti’s lab focuses on detecting and characterizing signals of natural selection in humans and pathogens. |
Cumrun Vafa, PhD
Hollis Professor of Mathematicks and Natural Pilosophy, Harvard University Professor Cumrun Vafa is the Hollis Professor of Mathematicks and Natural Pilosophy at Harvard University. Professor Vafa is a string theorist. His research is focused on the nature of quantum gravity and the relation between geometry and quantum field theories. Professor Vafa is known in the string theory community for his co-discovery, with Professor Andrew Strominger, that the Bekenstein-Hawking entropy of a black hole can be accounted for by solitonic states of superstring theory, and for expounding the relation between geometry and field theories that arise through string dualities (culminating in the Gopakumar-Vafa conjecture). Professor Vafa is a recipient of the 2008 Dirac Medal and currently a trustee of Network of Iranians for Knowledge and Innovation (NIKI). |
2015 Musical Performance
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