Speaker: Dr. Ali Gheissari

Topic: Debate on State and Democracy in the Iranian Constitutional Revolution of 1906-1911

Wednesday July 26, 2006

Modern Iranian political history has been shaped by the continuous struggle between, on the one hand, the ideals of freedom and the rule of law and, on the other, the demand for stability, order, and development and the kind of state that could provide them. This struggle first surfaced in Iran at the end of the nineteenth century and resulted in the Constitutional Revolution of 1906, which was a home-grown movement of political reform aimed at establishing an accountable and representative government, one that would meet the demand for strong state institutions, rule of law, and individual rights. The ideal of democracy therefore emerged with an emphasis on the rule of law rather than demand for liberty. However, it was an important step in producing a democratic movement that radically changed popular conceptions of political authority, the rights and responsibilities of rulers, and the role that the people play in it. Above all, it turned Iranians from subjects into citizens, and that in itself was a significant legal development. The present talk will explore certain aspects of this debate.

Ali Gheissari is Professor of History at the University of San Diego, specializing in the Intellectual and Political History of Modern Iran. He studied at the Faculty of Law and Political Science, Tehran University, and at St Antony's College, Oxford. He has held visiting appointments at Tehran University, the Oriental Institute at Oxford, UCLA, and Brown University. Selected publications include: Democracy in Iran: History and the Quest for Liberty, with Vali Nasr (2006); Iranian Intellectuals in the Twentieth Century (1998); Persian translation of Immanuel Kant's Groundwork of the Metaphysic of Ethics, with Hamid Enayat (1991); 'Poetry and Politics of Farrokhi Yazdi' in Iranian Studies (1993); 'Truth and Method in Modern Iranian Historiography and Social Sciences' in Critique (1995); 'Critique of Ideological Literature: A Review of Intellectual and Doctrinaire Writings in Iran' in Iran Nameh (1994); 'Modernity and Nationalism in the Literature of the late-Qajar and early-Pahlavi Iran (1921-1941)' in Iran Nameh (2000); 'Iran's Democracy Debates', with Vali Nasr, in Middle East Policy (2004); 'Despots of the World Unite! Satire in the Persian Constitutional Press: Introducing Majalleh-ye Estebdad, 1907-1908' in Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East (2005); 'Merchants without Frontier: Trade, Travel, and a Revolution in late Qajar Iran' in Roxane Farmanfarmaian (ed.), War and Peace in Qajar Persia: Implications Past and Present (forthcoming, 2007).

Ali Gheissari, Democracy in Iran: History and the Quest for Liberty (1905-2005), co-author Vali Nasr, New York: Oxford University Press, 2006.
http://www.us.oup.com/us/catalog/general/subject/ReligionTheology/Islam/?view=usa&ci=0195189671

Ali Gheissari, Iranian Intellectuals in the Twentieth Century. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1998.
http://www.utexas.edu/utpress/books/gheirp.html