Hamid Dabashi is an Iranian-American professor at Columbia University. He has authored more than 20 books and has expertise in subject areas including Iran, US foreign policy, the Middle East, identity politics and empire.
Dabashi grew up in Ahvaz in Iran, moved to Tehran in the 1970s and then relocated to the USA with his family in 1976.
In this interview he speaks about what life was like growing up in an Iran that was ruled by the CIA-backed shah and what it was like experiencing the Iranian revolution from afar, seeing the repressive regime of the Shah being replaced by a repressive theocracy.
Dabashi then touches on confronting the US empire and white supremacy as a brown-skinned Muslim in a period when the US has been engaged in wars in Arab and Muslim lands.
He recollects his long-standing friendship with the Palestinian intellectual Edward Said and how they as faculty of Columbia University along with other colleagues planted seeds that have blossomed into what have become solidarity protests with the Palestinian national cause on Columbia’s campus, which he describes as a “glorious sight”.
Dabashi believes that zionism, white supremacy and any other settler colonial ideology will inevitably be doomed.
Hosted by Ashfaaq Carim
00:00 Intro
00:55 Impact of growing up in Iran, two years after Mossadegh was removed by the CIA
04:58 Life in Ahwaz, cosmopolitan family, vodka and Umm Kulthoom
07:49 Was the repression under the shah apparent and June 1963 uprising
10:10 Political discussion inside the Dabashi household
11:10 Going to study undergraduate degree in Tehran in the 1970s
13:20 Getting an education be reading banned books
15:00 The sense of subversiveness in1970s Iran under the Shah
17:30 Gained in translation - learning from anti-colonials around the world
20:08 Immigrating to the USA in 1976 - did you feel a revolution was on the way
24:15 Living in the USA while the Iranian revolution is taking place
26:15 Your own sentiments on the Iranian revolution
28:00 How Khomeini crushed opposition
30:45 Limited media access in the USA to understand the revolution
32:15 What does't the west understand about Iran - immigrants civilising the pallet of the USA
35:00 On becoming more rooted in the USA
37:00 Did you think the Mullahs would still be in charge of Iran for so long
39:00 Edward Said and the exilic condition
40:48 Why would Iran unravel
42:15 How has living inside of empire changed you - 9/11 and the Gulf Wars
45:00 Becoming more conscious of being a muslim after 9/11
48:15 U.S moving away from real politik and into ideological white supremacy
51:00 When BLM took statues down and the racism of European enlightenment
55:00 How has Zionism used white supremacy
59:45 When Hamid Dabashi and Edward Said first tried to do a divestment campaign at Columbia
01:03:00 On being a subversive academic
01:06:00 The importance and diversity of the present protests
01:07:30 Attempts to delegitimise the protests are futile - The NYT should be studied for bias
01:10:30 The juxtaposition of calling out empire while being in the centre of empire
01:12:50 When Edward Said was demonised
01:16:20 Being critical of everything is liberating
01:18:20 What would Edward Said's reaction be to all that is going on
01:22:00 When will we see Palestinian liberation
01:24:30 One state solution is the only solution
01:27:00 The protestors are the moral conscious of the time
01:28:00 Judaism is being liberated from zionism
01:29:14 Who's gonna save humanity from white supremacy