Beyond The Headlines - Women, Life, Freedom: The Protests in Iran

Elisabeth Bumiller is an assistant managing editor of The New York Times and the Washington bureau chief, overseeing daily operations and leading all news coverage from Washington. Before moving to Washington, she was the Times’s City Hall bureau chief. Bumiller worked for The Washington Post in Washington, New Delhi, Tokyo and New York. She is the author of three books: “Condoleezza Rice: An American Life”; “May You Be the Mother of a Hundred Sons: A Journey Among the Women of India”; and “The Secrets of Mariko: A Year in the Life of a Japanese Woman and Her Family.” She was also a public policy scholar at the Woodrow Wilson International Center and a Transatlantic fellow at the German Marshall Fund of the United States. 

Nazila Fathi is a published author and an expert in creating and curating content. She excels in building and implementing communications strategies and helping companies increase their visibility. As a former correspondent for The New York Times, she is passionate about telling powerful stories and helping people connect with their audience. The Guardian, Foreign Policy Association, and Vogue magazine named Fathi’s book, The Lonely War, One Woman’s Account of the Struggle for Modern Iran, the best non-fiction of 2014. She has also published children’s books: My Name is Cyrus and Avicenna, The Father of Modern Medicine. Fathi was an associate at Harvard Belfer Center and held fellowships at Harvard Nieman Foundation and Harvard Shorenstein Center.

Azar Nafisi is the critically acclaimed author of Reading Lolita in Tehran, a New York Times bestseller that is published in thirty-two languages. Reading Lolita in Tehran was named as one of the “100 Best Books of the Decade” by The Times (London). Nafisi is also known for her other works including, Things I’ve Been Silent About, Republic of Imagination, and That Other World: Nabokov and the Puzzle of Exile. Nafisi has written for The New York Times, Washington Post, and The Wall Street Journal. She has held various teaching posts across the world including at Johns Hopkins University, Oxford University, and Free Islamic University and Allameh Tabatabai. Nafisi has lectured and written extensively in English and Persian on the political implications of literature and culture, as well as the human rights of the Iranian women and girls and the important role they play in the process of change for pluralism and an open society in Iran.

Robin Wright, is a columnist for The New Yorker and a joint fellow at the US Institute of Peace and the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. She has reported from more than 140 countries on seven continents for The Washington Post, CBS News, TIME, The Los Angeles Times, and many other publications. Wright has also been a fellow at the Brookings Institution, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Yale, Duke, Stanford, and the University of California. She is the recipient of several awards including the United Nations Correspondents Association Gold Medal for coverage of international affairs. She is the author of eight books, including “Rock the Casbah: Rage and Rebellion across the Islamic World.” Wright is a John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation awardee.