Narges Bajoghli, Assistant Professor of Middle East Studies at the Johns Hopkins-SAIS, is an award-winning anthropologist, scholar, and filmmaker. Her book, Iran Reframed: Anxieties of Power in the Islamic Republic received the 2020 Margaret Mead Award, 2020 Choice Award for Outstanding Academic Title, and the 2021 Silver Medal in Independent Publisher Book Awards. She co-authored How Sanctions Work: Iran and the Impact of Economic Warfareand directed the documentary “The Skin That Burns.” Bajoghli has written for The New York Times, The New York Times Magazine, Foreign Affairs, The Guardian, Foreign Policy, and Jacobin. She has appeared as a commentator on CNN, DemocracyNow!, NPR, BBC WorldService, BBC NewsHour, PBS NewsHour, and in Spanish on radio across Latin America. Bajoghli is the co-director of SAIS Rethinking Iran.
Vali Nasr is the Majid Khadduri Professor of International Affairs and Middle East Studies at Johns Hopkins-SAIS, and a Non-Resident Senior Fellow at the Atlantic Council’s South Asia Center. From 2012 to 2019, he served as the Dean of the School, and from 2009 to 2011, he was the Senior Advisor to US Special Representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan, Ambassador Richard Holbrooke. He authored The Dispensable Nation: American Foreign Policy in Retreat; Forces of Fortune: The Rise of a New Muslim Middle Class and How it Will Change Our World; The Shia Revival: How Conflicts within Islam will Shape the Future; Democracy in Iran: History and the Quest for Liberty; and co-authored How Sanctions Work: Iran and the Impact of Economic Warfare. He has written for The New York Times, Foreign Affairs, Financial Times, Wall Street Journal, and The Washington Post. Nasr is the co-director of SAIS Rethinking Iran.
Djavad Salehi-Isfahani is a professor of economics at Virginia Tech and an expert on the economics of the Middle East. He is also a research affiliate of the Middle East Initiative at Harvard Kennedy School’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs. Djavad received his PhD in Economics from Harvard University.
Ali Vaez is Crisis Group’s Iran Project Director and Senior Adviser to the President. He led Crisis Group’s efforts in helping to bridge the gaps between Iran and the P5+1 that led to the landmark 2015 nuclear deal. Previously, he served as a Senior Political Affairs Officer at the United Nations Department of Political and Peacebuilding Affairs and was the Iran Project Director at the Federation of American Scientists. He is an adjunct professor at Georgetown University’s Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service and a Fellow at the Foreign Policy Institute of the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies.
