Hooman Majd
| Hooman Majd | |
|---|---|
| Born | 1957 (age 59–60) Tehran, Iran |
| Residence | New York, United States |
| Citizenship | American, [Iran (dual citizenship, has Iranian Passport citation, The Daily Show 2014/02/25)] |
| Alma mater | St Paul's School, London, George Washington University |
| Occupation | Writer, journalist |
| Website | Hooman Majd |
Hooman Majd, born 1957 in Tehran, is an Iranian-American journalist, author, and commentator who writes on Iranian affairs. He is based in New York City and regularly travels to Iran.
Majd's maternal grandfather was the Ayatollah Mohammad Kazem Assar (1885–1975), who was born to an Iraqi mother and an Iranian father. The Ayatollah, along with other contemporary ulema, overcame traditional opposition to serve as a professor of philosophy at the University of Tehran. His own father, whose origins were in the village of Ardakan, Iran, became representative of a "middle class" that was "pro-democratic and pro-modernization".
Raised in a family involved in the diplomatic service, Majd lived from infancy abroad, mostly in the US and in England but attending American schools in varied places, such as Tunis and New Delhi. He boarded at St Paul's School in London, England and attended George Washington University in Washington, D.C. He stayed in the US after the 1979 revolution and finished his college education in the US.
He has published three non-fiction books, in the U.S., the U.K. and which have been translated into a number of other languages :
He has also published short fiction in collections and in The American Scholar and Guernica.
Majd has also served as an advisor and translator for President Mohammad Khatami and translator for President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on their trips to the United States and the United Nations, and has written about those experiences.
Roland Elliott Brown writes in the British newspaper The Observer that "Majd's mild reformist agenda requires him to fight on two fronts" and that he has "honed his polemical skills by defending the nascent Islamic Republic to Iranian emigres at Speakers' Corner in London." adding that, in his opinion, Majd is "a sometimes sympathetic communicator of the regime's positions, and an enthusiast only for its most loyal oppositionists". Reviewing Majd's book The Ayatollahs' Democracy, Brown observes that Majd regards the administration as "increasingly fascistic": "flawed, capricious, but also popular, and a bulwark of sovereignty".
...
Wikipedia