Iran Left Forum 2009 Bios

Obama and Iran: A New Beginning?

Ervand Abrahamian (B.A., M.A., Oxford University; Ph.D. Columbia University), an Armenian born in Iran and raised in England, is well qualified by education and experience to teach world and Middle East history. He has published Iran Between Two Revolutions, The Iranian Mojahedin, Khomeinism, Tortured Confessions, Inventing the Axis of Evil, and A History of Modern Iran. He teaches at the CUNY Graduate Center, and has taught at Princeton, New York University, and Oxford University. He is currently working on The CIA Coup in Iran for Cambridge University Press.

Reza Ghorashi has a Ph.D. in economics from Fordham University and teaches at Richard Stockton College of New Jersey. His areas of research and interest are international trade, globalization, and the Middle East, particularly Iran. He has published articles in both English and Farsi on the listed subject matters.

Tom O'Donnell (Ph.D., nuclear physics) writes and lectures widely on the global oil order and U.S. Middle East and Latin American relations. (See: http://TomOD.com) He is currently U.S. Fulbright Scholar in Caracas at The Center for the Study of Development (CENDES) at the Universidad Central de Venezuela researcing the political economy of oil in Venezuela in comparison to Algeria. He teaches at The New School's Graduate Program in International Affairs (GPIA) in NYC. Dr. O'Donnell is writing a book on "The New Globalized Oil Order and the Middle East." He spent many years as an industrial organizer/activist in Detroit auto plants and on Chicago railways.

Manijeh Saba is a citizen lobbyist and has been working both independently and with various grassroots organizations on human rights, peace, accountability, and the US-Iran relations in Washington D.C.

Ruth Indeck is coordinator of Economy Connection, the speaker/resource bureau of the Union for Radical Political Economics (www.urpe.org). Economy Connection has been providing speakers, written and electronic resources, and radical economics consultations since 1997. Clients include students, teachers, unions,journalists, tv and radio hosts, community organizers, and research organizations.