Concerned Scholars and Intellectuals Protest the Imprisonment of Kian Tajbakhsh

Concerned Scholars and Intellectuals Protest the Imprisonment of Kian Tajbakhsh W E AT SOCIAL RESEARCH: A N INTERNATIONAL QUARTERLY OF THE SOCIAL SCIENCES, based at the New School for Social Research, together w ith our read­ ers and colleagues worldwide, are deeply distressed by the arrest and im prisonm ent of our highly respected author and colleague, Kian Tajbakhsh. Rather th an rem ain in the United States, his com m itm ent to Iran, for which he has great affection, impelled him to return to Iran a half-decade ago to contribute to the country’s intellectual life and social development. There, his w ork on urban studies, public policy, and political participation have enhanced his already strong interna­ tional reputation as a social scientist of great talent and achievement. His fine scholarship has m ade great contributions to an understand­ ing of Iranian society, and has increased the possibility of cooperation across borders. We thus urgently call on the government of Iran to end the unjustified detainm ent of Dr. Tajbakhsh. Signatories include: vili social research Arjun Appadurai, John Dewey Distinguished Professor in the Social Sciences, The New School for Social Research, New York, NY, USA Tim othy Garton Ash, Professor o f European Studies, University of Oxford; Isaiah Berlin Professorial Fellow, St Antony’s College, Oxford, UK Noam Chomsky, Institute Professor (retired), MIT, Cambridge, MA, USA Juan R. I. Cole, Professor of History, University of Michigan; President, Global Americana Institute, Ann Arbor, Michigan, USA Sir Bernard Crick, Professor, University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, Scotland, United Kingdom Paul R. Ehrlich, Bing Professor o f Population Studies, President, Center for Conservation Biology, Department of Biological Sciences, Stanford University, Stanford, CA, USA Shepard Forman, Director, Center on International Cooperation, New York University, New York, USA Kurt Gottfried, Professor of Physics Emeritus, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY, USA Jan T. Gross, Norman B. Tomlinson ‘16 and ‘48 Professor of War and Society, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ, USA Adam Habib, Professor, Executive Director, Democracy and Governance, Human Science Research Council, South Africa Shireen Hassim, Professor, University o f the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa Agnes Heller, Professor of Philosophy, The New School for Social Research; Member of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, New York, NY, USA Edward Hirsch, President, John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, New York, NY, USA Eva Hoffman, Writer and Visiting Professor, Hunter College, New York, NY, USA Stanley Hoffmann, Buttenwieser University Professor, Center for European Studies, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, USA Nicholas Humphrey, Professor, London School of Economics, London, UK Beata Huszka, PhD Candidate, Central European University, Budapest, Hungary Jeffrey Isaac, James H. Rudy Professor and Chair of Political Science, Indiana University, Bloomington, Indiana, USA Bob Kerrey, President, The New School, New York, NY, USA Fatos Lubonja, Writer, journalist, human rights activist, Tirana, Albania Fyodor Lukyanov, Editor, Russia in Global Affairs Journal, Moscow, Russia Avishai Margalit, George F. Kennan Professor, Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, NJ, USA Endangered Scholars W orldw ide ix Edna Ullmann-Margalit, Director, Center for the Study o f Rationality, The Hebrew University o fJerusalem, Israel Marc Mauer, Executive Director, The Sentencing Project, Washington DC, USA Adam Michnik, Historian and writer, Warsaw, Poland Okello Oculi, Executive Director, Africa Vision 525, Abuja, Nigeria Claus Offe, Professor, Humboldt University and Hertie School o f Governance, Berlin, Germany Isaack O. Otieno, Political Scientist, Democratic Governance Expert, Senior Project Officer, Democratic Governance Office, CIDA, Kenya Samantha Power, Anna Lindh Professor o f the Practice of Global Leadership, John F. Kennedy School, Cambridge, MA, USA Ulrich K. Preuss, Professor, Hertie School of Governance, Berlin, Germany Kenneth Prewitt, Carnegie Professor o f Public Affairs, Columbia University, New York, NY, USA Arthur Ripstein, Professor of Law and Philosophy, University o f Toronto, Toronto, Ontario, Canada Jonathan Schell, Harold Willens Peace Fellow, The Nation Institute, The Nation Magazine, New York, NY, USA Aristide R. Zolberg, Walter Eberstadt Professor of Political Science, The New School for Social Research, New York, NY, USA x social research ...