Abbas Milani’s mission to preserve Iranian history
The Stanford Iranian Studies director has spent two decades transforming the program he founded into a global hub for the study of modern Iran.
Abbas Milani has vivid memories of what it was like in Tehran the day before the Iranian Revolution in 1979.
At the time, he was a young assistant professor at Tehran University where he taught political science and law. He recalls the anticipation in Tehran as Iran’s last monarch, Mohammad Reza Shah, was overthrown, and the country’s new supreme leader, the Islamic nationalist Ayatollah Khomeini, rose to power.
But Milani was hesitant, worried about what might happen to a country with a deep, rich culture that he cared about passionately.
“I knew disaster was coming,” said Milani.
A few years earlier, Milani had read some of Khomeini’s writings, but he never believed that such extreme ideology would ever become mainstream. “I said, ‘This is nonsense – these are medieval ideas. Nobody can do this in Iran.’ Well, the writer of those medieval ideas was being praised as a sacred figure whose image is seen on the moon, literally,” said Milani, referring to a rumor that had circulated about the leader’s face being visible on the lunar surface.
After the revolution, Milani found himself navigating restrictions far more oppressive than in the previous regime. For example, there were strict segregation laws between men and women, who were now mandated to wear a hijab, and widespread bans on Western culture. Punishment, even for minor offenses, became brutal.
“The period turned out to be far, far darker than I ever imagined,” said Milani, who joined Stanford in 2003 as a research fellow at the Hoover Institution – a position he still holds today, as well as being the Hamid and Christina Moghadam Director of Iranian Studies, a program he launched 20 years ago.
When Iraq invaded Iran in September 1980, life, which was already challenging for Milani and his family, became harder. Bombings and air raids were frequent. Food and basic supplies – including medicine like penicillin – were hard to come by.
By the summer of 1985, Milani fled Iran for California, where an old life awaited him: He had spent his formative years in the United States, attending high school in Oakland, completing his undergraduate studies at the University of California, Berkeley, before going to graduate school at the University of Hawaii. This time, however, he arrived knowing full well that he might never return to Iran.