Khotan Harmon

Nobel Peace Prize Winner Dr. Shirin Ebadi (A Discussion on Human Rights)

Dr. Shirin Ebadi is the first Iranian, the first Shia and the first Muslim woman to receive the Nobel Peace Prize.  A champion of human rights, Dr. Ebadi is universally celebrated as a tireless campaigner for legal and human rights reform in Iran.  Dr. Ebadi, was the first woman judge to preside over a legislative court in Iran, and although a supporter of the 1979 Iranian Revolution, she was stripped of her judgeship and her license to practice law was revoked when the conservative Muslim clerics succeeded in forbidding women from practicing law in Iran. Dr. Ebadi was able to regain her law license in 1992 and went on to become a lecturer in law at the University of Tehran and a defense counsel for victims of civil and human rights abuses.  Dr. Ebadi stopped by for a conversation on human rights,  Islam and democracy, modernity vs. westernization, and the creative lengths women go to regain their human rights in Iran today.  Join me for a discussion with a remarkable woman whom Desmond Tutu refers to as “… amazing and very brave woman living through some quite turbulent times…she emerges with head unbowed.”