Speakers

• Mahmoud Sadri

• Talk Video (English)

• Talk Video (Persian)

• 

  Mahmoud Sadri, a professor of sociology at Texas Woman's University, is known for his books, articles, blogs and lectures on democracy and reform in the Islamic Republic of Iran. He often collaborates in this work with his twin brother, Ahmad Sadri, who chairs the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at Lake Forest College outside Chicago.

  Mahmoud Sadri's major scholarly interests are the sociology of religion and culture and theoretical sociology. He earned his baccalaureate and master's degrees in sociology at the University of Tehran (1974, 1976), and his Ph.D. from New School University in New York City (1988). He taught at Northwestern University before joining the faculty of Texas Woman's University in Denton, Texas in 1998.

  Among Sadri's most recent books and articles are: "Premonitions of Interfaith Dialogue," published in the journal Interreligious Insight (January 2006); entries on "Hojjatieh," "Radical Islam" and "Halabi" in Encyclopedia Iranica (2005, 2006); "Migration Dynamics: A Theoretical and Substantive Reader," a textbook co-edited with Mohsen Mobasher (Prentice Hall, 2003); "Sacral Defense of Secularism" in "Intellectual Trends in 20th Century Iran: A Critical Survey" (Florida University Press, 2003); "Good News About Modernity" in "The Living Legacy of Marx, Durkheim, & Weber," Vol. II (Gordian Knot Books, 2000); "Reason, Freedom, and Democracy In Islam: The Essential Writings of Abdolkarim Soroush," translated with Ahmad Sadri (Oxford University Press, 2000).

  Sadri regularly contributes to popular journals and newspapers in his native Iran grants interviews to radio and television programs broadcast on the BBC, Radio France, Voice of America and Radio Australia. He writes opinion pieces for the Daily Star, the largest circulation newspaper in Beirut, and occasional pieces for the Guardian (U.K.), the New York Times, the Fort Worth Daily Telegraph, Newsweek, and Time.