Azar Nafisi, Visiting Fellow, John's Hopkins University's Nitze School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) and author of the critically-acclaimed best-seller, "Reading Lolita in Teheran" spoke to FPA at the New York Democracy Forum on the subject of "Women, Culture, Human Rights: The Case of Iran."

Nafisi spoke widely on the importance of democracy both at home and abroad, as well as the power of the arts in sustaining what she called a "Republic of Imagination." "I think that when we talk about the issue of democracy, we need to look at the others and we also need to look at ourselves," Nafisi said to a large audience at the Kaye Playhouse at Hunter College. "Democracy and terror, human rights and fundamentalism are not the property of the West. They are not geographically or nationally or culturally defined, they belong to all of us."

A professor of aesthetics, culture and literature, Dr. Nafisi is the author of the critically-acclaimed best-seller, Reading Lolita in Teheran: A Memoir in Books, which is based upon her experience in Iran leading a discussion group of young women on forbidden works of Western literature prior to fleeing that country for the U.S. 1997. As a teacher at the Free Islamic University, Allameh Tabatabaii, and the University of Tehran-where she was eventually expelled for refusing to wear the mandatory Islamic veil--she earned national respect and international recognition for advocating on behalf of Iran's intellectuals, youth, and especially young women.