Abbas Milani

Abbas Malekzadeh Milani (; born 1949) is an Iranian-American historian, educator, and author. Milani is a visiting professor of political science, and the Hamid and Christina Moghadam Director of the Iranian Studies program at Stanford University. He is also a research fellow and co-director of the Iran Democracy Project at Stanford University's Hoover Institution. In Milani's book, Lost Wisdom: Rethinking Modernity in Iran (2004, Mage Publications), he has found evidence that Persian modernism dates back to more than 1,000 years ago.

Biography Milani was born in Iran to a prosperous family and was sent to California when he was sixteen, graduating from Oakland Technical High School in 1966 after only one year of studies. He was a research fellow at the Iranian Center for Social Research from 1977 to 1978. He was also an assistant professor of law and political science at the University of Tehran and a member of the board of directors of Tehran University's Center for International Studies from 1979 to 1986, but after the Iranian Revolution he was not allowed to publish or teach.

Since 2011, Milani shifted the focus of his research to the era of Reza Shah.

Political activities Milani embraced Marxism–Leninism during his youth and was a member of a Maoist underground cell that was uncovered by Iranian security forces in 1975. He was subsequently jailed at Evin Prison, and became disillusioned with revolutionary politics. His eventual ideology has been described as neoconservative. In July 2009, Milani appeared in a United States House Committee on Foreign Affairs hearing amidst 2009 Iranian presidential election protests, and called for imposing "multilateral and crippling sanctions" on Iranians.

Personal life Milani separated from his first wife, Fereshteh Davaran, in 1988. He lives on the Stanford campus with his second wife, Jean Nyland, who is professor emerita and former chair of Notre Dame de Namur's psychology department.

Essays and articles