Today’s episode of the MERIP Podcast is an audio recording from the first event in our Iran in Context series. This series is co-produced by MERIP, BRISMES, the British Society for Middle East Studies, and SeSaMO, the Italian Society for Middle East Studies. Each event features conversations with scholars about the deeper context behind the political and military convulsions in Iran over the last year.

For the first installment, we took up the topic of gender and revolution in conversation with Manijeh Moradian, assistant professor of Women, Gender and Sexuality Studies at Barnard College and author of the book, This Flame Within: Iranian Revolutionaries in the United States (Duke University Press, 2022), and Nazanin Shahrokni, associate professor of International Studies at Simon Fraser University and author of the book, Women in Place: The Politics of Gender Segregation in Iran (University of California Press, 2020).

This conversation was recorded on June 18, 2026.

Further Reading:

Manijeh Moradian, This Flame Within Iranian Revolutionaries in the United States (Duke University Press, 2022)

Manijeh Moradian, "Feminist Uprising in Iran and the Politics of Solidarity," Meridians (April 2026)

Manijeh Moradian "Decolonial Diasporas: Iranian Feminist Solidarity in Global Context" Iranian Studies. (October 2025)

Manijeh Moradian, "Embodying Revolution: Situating Iran within Transnational Feminist Solidarities," Radical History Review (January 2024)

Feminists for Jina

Nazanin Shahrokni, Women in Place: The Politics of Gender Segregation in Iran (University of California Press 2020)

Nazanin Shahrokni, “Who Speaks for Iran?–and From Where? Geopolitics, Representation and Solidarity,” SPECTRE: A Marxist Journal, March 2, 2026

The MERIP Podcast features exclusive interviews with contributors to the Middle East Research and Information Project from the present and past about their work for MERIP, as well as audio from events we've conducted online and in-person that examine contemporary issues in the politics, economy, society and culture of the Middle East. Hosted by James Ryan, MERIP's Executive Director. Visit our website, www.merip.org, to read all of our work without paywalls.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Today’s episode of the MERIP Podcast features an interview with Ayça Alemdaroğlu about her article, “The Capture of Turkey’s Universities Under the AKP,” in our Spring 2026 issue, “Campus Politics–Palestine and the New University Order.” MERIP executive director James Ryan spoke with Alemdaroğlu about the efforts of President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s Justice and Development Party to co-opt university administrations and contain campus dissent over the last 25 years. While attempting to coerce and repress the strongest and most outspoken voices on prestigious campuses like Boğaziçi or Middle East Technical University the state has also invested heavily in constructing and opening new universities, often in more provincial settings, in order to build its own hegemonic institutions. As Alemdaroğlu explains in her piece, "Although access to institutions of higher education has expanded greatly, academic freedom has been steadily eroded through the combined force of ordinary administrative authority and extraordinary instruments such as emergency decrees, which together reoriented universities toward political compliance." The conversation also covered the abrupt closure and swift re-opening of Istanbul Bilgi University in May, one of Turkey’s leading private universities and an avant-garde institution for liberal and progressive academics.

This conversation was recorded on June 8, 2026

Further reading:

Ayça Alemdaroğlu, “The Capture of Turkey’s Universities Under the AKP”, Middle East Report, Issue 318, Spring 2026

Ayça Alemdaroğlu and Elif Babül, “Boğaziçi Resists Authoritarian Control of the Academy in Turkey” Middle East Report Online, February 23, 2021

Ayça Alemdaroğlu “The University in the Making of Authoritarian Turkey” European Journal of Turkish Studies Issue 34, 2022

Ayça Alemdaroğlu, “Tek İmza Cumhuriyetinde Üniversite: İstanbul Bilgi Üniversite” (“The University in the Single-Signature Republic: Istanbul Bilgi University”), Birikim Dergisi May 26, 2026

“Yellow Letters” (Sarı Zarflar) [Film] https://www.imdb.com/title/tt32888226/

MESA Committee on Academic Freedom, Letters on Turkey

The MERIP Podcast features exclusive interviews with contributors to the Middle East Research and Information Project from the present and past about their work for MERIP, as well as audio from events we've conducted online and in-person that examine contemporary issues in the politics, economy, society and culture of the Middle East. Hosted by James Ryan, MERIP's Executive Director. Visit our website, www.merip.org, to read all of our work without paywalls.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.