Faculty & Fellows Colloquium

Captive Society: the Basij and Social Control in Post Revolutionary Iran

Saeid Golkar, a visiting scholar at the Buffett Center, is an Iranian political scientist who served as a lecturer in the department of social sciences at Azad University, in Tehran from 2004 to 2009, where he taught undergraduate courses on the political sociology of Iran and the sociology of war and military forces. Prior to joining Northwestern University, he served as a post-doctoral fellow at the Center for Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law at Stanford University. His research interests encompass politics of authoritarian regime, political sociology of Iran, political control and violence and democracy promotion in the Middle East. Recent publications include articles in the journal Middle East Quarterly, Armed Forces & Society, Middle East Brief, and The Journal of the Middle East and Africa.