The 25 members of the Tufts community who braved last night's snow storm to attend "Iran Unveiled: Tufts In The Islamic Republic" were granted an insider's glimpse into the country by seven Tufts and Fletcher School students who have seen what's behind the proverbial veil firsthand.
The students' trip to Iran last May was taken through the New Initiative for Middle East Peace (NIMEP) - a project under the Institute for Global Leadership - which junior and trip co-coordinator Negar Razavi described as "a non-political, non-polemical think tank devoted to progressive research and dialogue about the Middle East."
In keeping with NIMEP's mission, the trip had a serious purpose. In fact, it was the first time in over 35 years that an official American student delegation had entered the country to engage in dialogue.
"It was pretty nerve-wracking - going to the Islamic Republic of Iran is a pretty big deal," said Razavi in her introduction. "There's very little known about Iran. There's no diplomatic relations, there's open hostility because of the U.S. support of the Shah of Iran, and also because of the Iran hostage crisis in 1979."
Razavi said that the idea behind the trip was to get students, from both the United States and Iran, to "transcend these governmental hostilities and to see each other not just as the 'Axis of Evil' or the 'Great Satan,'" she said.
The trip was a part of the Iran Dialogue Initiative, a branch of NIMEP.
The students who traveled to Iran was an ethnically and religiously diverse group.
"We had five Fletcher students and five undergraduate students. We had Armenian students, Jewish students, agnostic students," Razavi said.
The group visited an equally diverse array of cultural and historical sites, such as the center of Shiite theocracy, followed by a synagogue.
The group also held two dialogue exchanges with their Iranian student counterparts and met with various Iranian political and cultural figures, including Minoo Emami, a painter in Tehran, and Majid Majidi, an Academy Award-nominated Iranian filmmaker.
The discussion that followed Razavi's introduction centered around the participants' impressions of Iran's cultural, religious and political climate.
"There was a coffee shop under a bridge that women are not allowed to enter, but somehow our tour guide was able to talk them into letting us all come in as a group," said senior Rachel Brandenburg. "The females had to go on one side of the room, and the males on the other."
"There were women standing outside when we walked out," Brandenburg said. "The thing that struck me was the looks on their faces - they were not allowed to enter, and here we were, some foreign women, just walking in and out on our own."
"I think they stereotype us less than we stereotype them," said second-year Fletcher student Devon Ysaguirre. "But they definitely gave us looks, and we deserved them. Why should we be allowed to enter this place when they're not allowed to?"
Brandenburg said there was a delicate balance needed to adjust to the Iranian lifestyle.
"Culturally, it was fine - any inhibitions I had about being an American in Iran disappeared as soon as I got there," Brandenburg said. "But having to wear a headscarf all the time, having to be careful how close I sat to a guy, those day-to-day things could be very difficult."
But Iranian women have bigger concerns than those over headscarves.
"When we started talking to people about in what regard they feel the most oppressed, the last thing they ever mentioned was the headscarves," alumnus Joe Jaffe (LA '05) said. "Many of them, if they had the option, said they'd choose to continue to wear them as an observance of their faith."
"The things they cared about," he said, "were things like property rights, the right to divorce your husband."
"It was interesting to experience the different rules," first-year Fletcher and Medical School student Jason Dettori said. "I don't really feel like there were any special boundaries placed on us because we were Americans - just the cultural boundaries that already exist for the people there."
Along with NIMEP, "Iran Unveiled" was sponsored by the Persian Students Association and the Tufts Institute for Global Leadership.
NIMEP has sponsored several trips to the Middle East, including one to Israel and the West Bank last January and February, and one to Egypt last year. The students involved plan to create a documentary film about their experiences in Iran.
