Description:

Saeid Golkar will be a visiting lecturer in MENA for Winter-Spring 2015 and is senior fellow of Iran policy at The Chicago Council on Global Affairs. Prior to that, he served as a post-doctoral fellow at the Center for Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law at Stanford University. He received his PhD in political science from Tehran University in 2008 and was a lecturer at Azad University before coming to the US. His research interests encompass politics of authoritarian regimes, state and society relationships, civil military gaps, social movements and new Information technologies and politics all with a focus on the Middle East. Recent publications can also be found in journals such as Middle East Journal; Armed Forces & Society; Politics, Religion & Ideology; Middle East Policy, Journal of Women of the Middle East and the Islamic World, the journal of Middle East and Africa, Digest of Middle East Studies, Middle East Quarterly, and Journal of Emerging Technologies & Society.

He has recently completed a book on the Basij (Iran's paramilitary force) and the social control In Iran, to be published by Columbia University and Woodrow Wilson press in 2014. The book, "Captive Society; The Basij Militia and Social Control in Iran," surveys the Basij’s history, structure, and relation with the Revolutionary Guard, sociology, and roles in society, the economy, and the educational system. This is the first full-length study of this critical organization in the Iranian power structure. The book provides a comprehensive account of the Basij’s organizational structure, insight into the social background of its membership, the training and indoctrination of the members, and the Basij’s extensive security, watchdog, and propaganda role in Iranian society.

Lunch served.