A senior writer at the Washington bureau of The New York Times and a recent senior fellow at the United States Institute of Peace during which time she examined the impact and effects of the Islamic fundamentalist revolution in Iran, Elaine Sciolino has spent 20 years reporting on and researching Iran, longer than any other American journalist. As an international correspondent for Newsweek, she covered the Iranian revolution, the hostage crisis in Iran and the Iran-Iraq war. In the free public lecture Persian Mirrors: The Elusive Face of Iran on Wednesday, October 18 at 5 p.m. in UCSB Corwin Pavilion, she will read from and discuss her new book, which synthesizes her more than two decades of study of that country. Courtesy of the UCSB Bookstore, copies of books by Sciolino will be available for purchase and signing at the event.

Sciolino was aboard the plane that took the Ayatollah Khomeini to Tehran in 1979. She was there for the seizure of the American Embassy, the Iran-Iraq war and the student riots of the summer of 1999. She has interviewed every key leader, from Khomeini to Khatami. And she has gotten to know the people of the Islamic Republic in private.

In her new book, like her lecture titled Persian Mirrors: The Elusive Face of Iran, she reveals the human side of Iran, beyond the terrorists and veiled women that populate most Americans’ images of that culture. She presents a land of striking contradictions and wondrous surprises. Going beyond the headlines, Sciolino offers an inside view of the daring experiments in Islam and democracy she has witnessed first hand within Iranian society—in the press, cinema, beauty salons, posh restaurants and homes. In the process, she shatters entrenched perceptions of Iranian life itself, discovering, for example, popular films that depict divorce and suicide—two taboos of Islamic faith—and meeting women who not only wear red lipstick and gold bangles among friends, but don Chanel beneath their chadors.

Sciolino’s book introduces individuals of fierce determination and remarkable spirit. Among them are Faezeh Hashemi, the daughter of Iran’s former President Rafsanjani, who is a tireless and outspoken advocate for women’s rights, and Amir Mahallati, the son of a prominent spiritual leader, who has an unabashed passion for sensuous poetry.

Currently responsible for profiles and special projects at the Washington bureau, Sciolino was the chief diplomatic correspondent for The New York Times from 1992 to 1996 and was the first woman to ever hold that post. She covered the intelligence beat in 1991 and 1992 and served as a diplomatic correspondent from 1987 to 1991. From 1985 to 1987, she was bureau chief at the United Nations after joining the newspaper in 1984 as a general assignment reporter.

From 1972 until she joined the Times, she worked in a variety of posts for Newsweek, most notably as a foreign correspondent in Paris from 1978 to 1980, the Rome bureau chief from 1980 to 1982, and a roving international correspondent based in New York in 1983 and 1984. In addition to her coverage of Iran during that time, she also reported on the invasion of Grenada and the disastrous incursion of U.S. Marines in Lebanon.

During 1982-83, Sciolino was the first woman to become the Edward R. Murrow Press Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. She received the Overseas Press Club citation for magazine reporting abroad in 1983 and shared in the National Headliners Award for outstanding coverage of a major news event by a magazine in 1981.

Her other book, The Outlaw State: Saddam Hussein’s Quest for Power and the Gulf Crisis, was a Book-of-the-Month Club selection in 1991.

This event is presented as part of the lecture series Global Peace, Security and Human Rights by UCSB Arts & Lectures, Interdisciplinary Humanities Center, Global Peace and Security Program and Global and International Studies Program, and the UC Institute for Global Conflict and Cooperation, in partnership with the Santa Barbara Committee on Foreign Relations, Nuclear Age Peace Foundation, PAX 2100, the International Studies Association at Santa Barbara City College and the International Studies Program at Ventura College.

For more information,
call UCSB Arts & Lectures at (805) 893-3535.

Editor: For photos, please call
Roman Baratiak at (805) 893-2080.