Maxwell’s Mehrzad Boroujerdi named president-elect of the International Society for Iranian Studies

The prestigious International Society for Iranian Studies (ISIS) has named Mehrzad Boroujerdi, associate professor of political science at the Maxwell School of Syracuse University and founder-director of the Middle Eastern Studies Program at SU, as its president-elect. He will assume the office in November 2012.

ISIS is a North America-based academic society established in 1967 to expand the horizons of Iranian studies and to support cutting-edge research and scholarship about the country and the region. The Society is dedicated to promoting high standards of scholarship in the field, to encouraging the teaching of Iranian studies at the graduate and undergraduate levels, and to encouraging and facilitating scholarly exchange among its international membership. As an independent, non-partisan, non-political, multi-disciplinary international community of more than 500 scholars, students, academic and non-academic researchers, and aficionados of Iranian studies, ISIS is committed to promoting the free exchange of ideas; freedom of expression in all forms and all media; and unrestricted pursuit of research, instruction, publication, and presentation (in Iran and internationally). ISIS also publishes Iranian Studies, a journal that continues to serve as the principal journal in the field.

Professor Boroujerdi is regarded as one of the world’s leading Iran experts. His studies focus on Iran and political Islam. His current research is on the political elite of post-revolutionary Iran. He is the author of Iranian Intellectuals and the West: The Tormented Triumph of Nativism, which has been translated into Arabic, Persian, and Turkish, and is the general editor of the Modern Intellectual and Political History of the Middle East series published by Syracuse University Press. Boroujerdi has consulted with numerous domestic and international organizations and is a frequent commentator for the BBC and the Voice of America, as well as various newspapers and radio and TV stations.