Haleh Esfandiari

Haleh Esfandiari (Persian: هاله اسفندیاری‎‎) (born March 3, 1940) is an Iranian-American academic and the Director of the Middle East Program at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, D.C. Her areas of expertise include Middle Eastern women's issues, contemporary Iranian intellectual currents and politics, and democratic developments in the Middle East. She was detained in solitary confinement at Evin Prison in Tehran, Iran from May 8 to August 21, 2007, more than 110 days.

Esfandiari was born and grew up in Iran. She has lived in the United States since 1980, having left Iran with her husband and daughter because of the 1979 Iranian Revolution. She holds dual U.S.-Iranian citizenship.

Esfandiari is married to Shaul Bakhash, a Jewish Iranian-American professor of history and Persian studies at George Mason University. She met Bakhash in the early 1960s, when both were reporters at the Iranian newspaper Kayhan. They have a daughter and two granddaughters.

Before Esfandiari left Iran, she had a career as a journalist and taught at the College of Mass Communication in Tehran. She was also Deputy Secretary General of the Women's Organization of Iran and she was responsible for several museums and art and cultural centers. She earned her Ph.D. at the University of Vienna.

In the United States, Esfandiari taught courses on Persian language, contemporary Persian literature and the women's movement in Iran at Princeton University from 1980 to 1994. She was a fellow at the Wilson Center from 1995 to 1996. She has served as director of the Middle East Program at the Wilson Center since 1997. She was also involved with the Wilson Center's collaboration with the RAND Corporation's Initiative for Middle Eastern Youth.

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