PROGRAM
On November 21, 2011, Roosevelt House hosted a book discussion with Roya Hakakian, author of Assassins of the Turquoise Palace, in conversation with Elizabeth Rubin, contributing writer at New York Times Magazine and Edward R. Murrow press fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, with introduction by Joanne Mariner, Distinguished Lecturer and Rita Hauser Director of Hunter College’s Human Rights Program.
ABOUT THE BOOK:
Assassins of the Turquoise Palace is a highly acclaimed non-fiction political thriller about the assassination of four Iranian opposition members in a restaurant in Berlin in 1992 — a crime that implicated the highest levels of Iran’s leadership. Praised by the New York Times as “carefully researched and vividly written,” the book provides a dramatic and detailed account of the assassination, subsequent investigation and trial, and also offers a wider look at Iran’s exile community and its effect on Iran’s relations with the West. New York Times continues, “some of the exuberance of the protest movement that brought Khomeini to power has uneasy parallels with the revolutionary fervor behind the more violent aspects of the Arab Spring. In addition to being a lively account of an extraordinary trial, Roya Hakakian’s book can be read as an unsettling reminder of the dangers of excessive zeal.”
“This is a brilliant, riveting book, with all the elements of a great thriller-a horrific crime, sociopathic villains, international intrigue, personal betrayals, a noble prosecutor and an honorable judge. And it is all too real: with remarkably comprehensive reporting and brisk, smart writing, Roya Hakakian has told a great story but, more important, she has made plain the lethal immorality at the heart of Iran’s regime” – Joe Klein, Time Magazine
ABOUT THE SPEAKERS:
Roya Hakakian was born and raised in Iran and came to the United States in 1985 as a political refugee. She is a fellow at Yale University’s Whitney Humanities Center and serves on the board of Refugees International and is a founding member of the Iran Human Rights Documentation Center. Her memoir of growing up a Jewish teenager in post-revolutionary Iran, Journey from the Land of No: A Girlhood Caught in Revolutionary Iran, was a Publishers Weekly Best Book of the Year. Her opinion columns, essays, and reviews are published in the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, and other periodicals. She is also a contributor to the weekend dition of NPR’s “All Things Considered.” She has collaborated on over a dozen hours of programming for leading journalism units on network television, including 60 Minutes and ABC Documentary Specials. She recently appeared on Charlie Rose, discussing the current accusations against Iranian officials plot to kill the Saudi ambassador to the United States. Ms. Hakakian majored in psychology at Brooklyn College and earned her master’s degree in social work at Hunter College.
To watch Ms. Hakakian’s interview with Charlie Rose, please click here.
Joanne Mariner, a distinguished lecturer at Hunter College, is the Rita Hauser Director of Hunter’s Human Rights Program. Before joining Hunter in January 2011, she worked at Human Rights Watch, most recently as the director of the organization’s Terrorism and Counterterrorism Program. She also writes a biweekly legal column for Justia’s online magazine, Verdict. An expert on counterterrorism laws and policies, Mariner has researched and written about indefinite detention, administrative measures such as “control orders,” criminal prosecutions of suspected terrorists, and government efforts to stem the flow of funds to militant groups. In 2006, she testified before the European Parliament about CIA activities in Europe. She is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and on the board of advisors of the International Centre for Counter-Terrorism – The Hague and the International Justice Resource Center.
Elizabeth Rubin is the Edward R. Murrow press fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR). Ms. Rubin is a contributing writer at the New York Times Magazine. Since October 2001, she has reported extensively from Afghanistan on the overthrow of the Taliban, life and politics under President Hamid Karzai, the rise of the new Taliban in Afghanistan and Pakistan, and American counterinsurgency efforts. For the past decade she has worked as a foreign correspondent, writing from Iraq, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan, Russia, the Caucasus, the Middle East, Africa, and the Balkans. Her stories have appeared in the New York Times Magazine, the Atlantic Monthly, the New Republic, Harper’s, and the New Yorker. Her reportage in Harper’s “An Army of One’s Own,” about private armies, diamond wars, and state collapse in Sierra Leone, was a National Magazine Award finalist and earned an Overseas Press Club citation for excellence. She was selected for a Livingston Award for International Reporting for her New Yorker piece “Our Children Are Killing Us,” about the Lord’s Resistance Army, a rebel Ugandan group financed by the Sudanese and composed of kidnapped Ugandan children. She also won the Kurt Schork Award for International Reporting and a Michael Kelly Award. She was also a 2004-2005 Nieman Fellow at Harvard University. Ms. Rubin holds a BA from Columbia University and an MPhil from Oxford University.
