Yet in my 10 trips to Iran over the past 20 years, I find that Iranians from every walk of life are acutely aware of this historical fact about U.S. policy. The average Iranian is also aware of this: In 1953, the CIA joined the British to support a coup that overthrew Iran’s democratically elected leader, Mohammed Mossadeq. This led to U.S firms controlling 40 percent of Iran’s petroleum output.

We Americans need to know this history, too, in order to understand the gap likely to be visible between the U.S and Iranian negotiators at the talks.

On a microcosmic level, the faculty and staff at my place of employment, ²ÝÝ®ÉçÇø, need to understand this history in order to be gracious hosts to 10 Iranian-Muslim women scholars who are planning to attend our annual , beginning in early May.

Across the ocean, U.S. negotiators will be seeking tight controls on Iran’s nuclear program, fearing that Iran wants to build a nuclear weapon.

Yet in the mid-1970s, then-U.S. President Gerald R. Ford — whose key advisers included Henry Kissinger, Donald Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney and Paul Wolfowitz — endorsed Iran’s plans to build a huge nuclear energy program, supported the sale of U.S. nuclear reactors to Iran and even offered Iran the chance to buy and operate a U.S.-built reprocessing facility capable of extracting plutonium from nuclear reactor fuel (a key step in the capacity to build a nuclear weapon).

At the time, the United States had a warm relationship with Iran’s leader, Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi.

That changed in 1979 with the Iranian revolution that sent Pahlavi into exile. Later that year, Iranian students stormed the U.S. embassy in Tehran and held 52 hostages for 444 days. It was traumatic and embarrassing for most Americans — certainly for the Carter administration. Diplomatic ties that were broken in early 1980 have yet to be restored.

In my travels to Iran on behalf of Mennonite peace-oriented and interfaith initiatives, I have found Iranians to be hospitable and engaging, eager to talk with Americans and intrigued with many Western ideas. But it quickly becomes clear that they have a decidedly different narrative — and a longer memory — about when U.S.-Iranian relations went sour.

The alleged U.S. reason for backing the 1953 coup was to contain communism and Soviet influence in Iran. But the fact that Mossadeq wanted to nationalize Iran’s oil reserves can hardly be dismissed as a motivating factor.

In Mossadeq’s place the United States bolstered the leadership of Pahlavi, who grew increasingly repressive, detaining and torturing his opponents.

Part of the Iranian students’ motivation in 1979 was the fear that the United States was planning another coup after the hated shah was forced out of power.

At the where I work, we have hosted Iranian students for the past 15 years.

Face-to-face conversations help build understanding that is missing from the media portrayals Americans and Iranians see of one another.

If visas are approved, 10 Iranian women scholars will be arriving in less than one month. The women are doctoral students at Jami’at al-Zahra, the largest Shiite Islam women’s seminary in the world.

Restoring diplomatic relations between the U.S. and Iran might yet take many years, and will require rebuilding the lost trust between our countries, one relationship at a time.

Both the negotiations in Vienna and these Iranian women, serving as ambassadors of friendship, are important steps toward a second chance for mutually respectful U.S.-Iranian relationships.

This , in the Richmond Times-Dispatch and is being re-published and circulated by EMU, with permission of the Times-Dispatch. If used further, just credit the Richmond-Times Dispatch.

Dr. Muhammad A. Legenhausen speaks and interacts with his audience during an Abraham’s Tent forum at EMU. Photo by Jon Styer

Dr. Legenhausen, who teaches at the Imam Khomeini Education and Research Institute in Qom, Iran, told his audience that while peace is central to Islam, peace studies are often taught in the jurisprudence context and through the lens of resisting acts which cause harm.

“Individual peace studies courses are taught at both the undergraduate and graduate level, peace studies as a university-focused program has not yet been adopted [in Iran], he said. At the request of the Iranian Ministry of Higher Education, Legenhausen has written a peace studies program curriculum which he hopes to see launched in the coming years.

An advocate of religious pluralism and interfaith dialogue, Legenhausen has written a book, Islam and Religious Pluralism, and serves on the advisory board of the Society for Religious Studies in Qom as well as on the Abraham’s Tent Advisory Council.

For more than a decade Legenhausen has met with numerous Mennonite Central Committee (MCC) learning tours and delegations to Iran and has given high praise for the work towards building interfaith relationships Mennonites have undertaken in Iran.

“Mennonites have tremendous spiritual capital in Iran through these personal exchanges which began in 1996,” he said, recounting a comment an Iranian university student made to an MCC worker: “You people are so nice! How come you aren’t Muslims?” The MCCer replied, “We are here to study Islam to that we can be better Christians.”

“Building personal relationships is key to breaking down barriers of misunderstanding between Christians and Muslims,” said Gretchen Maust, associate director of Abraham’s Tent. The forums EMU’s newly-launched interfaith center is sponsoring “provide an excellent venue for honest conversation with leading interfaith advocates,” she noted.

Originally from New York, Legenhausen holds a PhD in Philosophy from Rice University, where he first became acquainted with Muslims. He converted to Islam in 1983 and has been studying Islam and teaching philosophy of religion and ethics in Iran for 20 years.

The highly engaging Drs. Akrami, Rasoulipour and Mousavian emphasized the eager willingness of many Iranians to promote interfaith dialogue among ‘people of the book’ who share a common heritage as Children of Abraham. Their visit to the EMU campus was jointly sponsored by Abraham’s Tent and Mennonite Central Committee. (Photo by Jim Bishop)

Jointly sponsored by Abraham’s Tent and Mennonite Central Committee, the visit included meetings with top school administrators, personnel from the Center for Justice and Peacebuilding and an afternoon forum on the topic, “Why Faith-based Peacebuilding is Important.”

Importance of interfaith dialogue

An active proponent of interfaith dialog, Dr. Rasoulipour works closely with the Center for Interreligious Dialogue in Tehran where he formerly served as director. In recent years he has been instrumental in arranging MCC learning tours to Iran.

Two Iranian colleagues, Dr. Seyed Mousavian and Dr. Amir Akrami, both professors of philosophy and religion in Iran, were able to join Dr. Rasoulipour for the EMU meetings.

The late afternoon forum drew an unexpectedly large group of about 100 persons.

East Coast learning tour

Ed Martin, formerly of MCC, helped to organize an East Coast tour for the three interfaith dialogue proponents. Their visit included meetings in Charlottesville, Washington, DC., and Cambridge, Mass.

Dr. Rasoulipour has spent the past year as a visiting professor at Notre Dame University in South Bend, Ind., and returned to his teaching post in Tehran on June 5.

Prior to the forum, Dr. Rasoulipour talks with Robert Lee, retired Mennonite Mission Network missionary who worked with his wife, Nancy, for many years in Japan. (Photo by Jim Bishop)

“We feel highly honored by Dr. Rasoulipour’s visit and his willingness to not only lecture on this important topic but to share his personal commitment to interfaith dialogue,” said Gretchen H. Maust, associate director of Abraham’s Tent.

“It’s important for us to know that the Iranian people long to build relationships and welcome opportunities to debate our differences so we can grow in respectful understanding of each other,” she added.

Learn more

• Abraham’s Tent: A Center for Interfaith Engagement at EMU
• Center for Justice and Peacebuilding
• Undergraduate peacebuilding and development studies

Two EMU student organizations are co-sponsoring an event meant to challenge the EMU and larger community with the issue of economic justice in Israel-Palestine.

J. Daryl and Cindy Byler, Mennonite Central Committee Middle East representatives for Palestine, Jordan, Iraq, and Iran, will speak 8 p.m. Thursday, Mar. 19, in the Common Grounds Coffeehouse in the University Commons.

The couple will focus on facts on the ground following the Israeli offense on Gaza and the larger Israeli occupation, draw connections between U.S. policy and present the need for a morally responsible investment/divestment campaign.

The Bylers will also speak at a forum 3:45-5:15 p.m. Thursday, Mar. 19, in the Strite Conference Room of EMU’s Campus Center. They will reflect on MCC’s approach and activities in interfaith bridgebuilding and the challenges they encounter in their work.

Daryl Byler, a 1979 EMU graduate, is an attorney and former director of MCC’s Washington, D.C., office. He was named EMU’s “alumnus of the year” in 1992.

The EMU Peace Fellowship and Res Judicata student pre-law group are co-sponsoring Wednesday’s program. Thursday’s forum is co-sponsored by the Anabaptist Center for Religion and Society (ACRS) and the Center for Justice and Peacebuilding (CJP).

Admission is free to both events.

Dan Wesser, professor of international and political studies at EMU, gives an overview of the Iran visit, assisted by (l. to r.): Paul Yoder, Rachel Spory, Josh Brubaker and Fatemeh Darabi, a CJP student from Iran. Photos by Jim Bishop

It was Dan Wessner‘s first great surprise.

One of Rachel Spory’s, too.

They had just arrived inI ran – a nation that many in the West view with suspicion and fear – as part of a delegation created by the Mennonite Central Committee. Wessner, a professor, and Spory, a recent graduate, traveled as representatives of ²ÝÝ®ÉçÇø.

An Iranian guide handed his visitors a delicacy – a lemon.

Wessner sank his teeth into its rind.

“It was sweet,” he recalled Tuesday afternoon, just two weeks after he returned from the Islamic Republic. “It tasted like a mild, sweet orange.”

These were sweet lemons, unique to Eurasia.

“To me, that became a really important metaphor for all the surprises Iran had in store for us,” Wessner said.

He adapted the name of the fruit as the title of a presentation he delivered Tuesday at EMU’s Seminary.

Wessner, a professor of international and political studies, spoke alongside Spory, who now works for the university, and graduates Paul Yoder and Josh Brubaker, and current graduate student Fatemeh Darabi, an Iranian native.

Yoder and Brubaker also were recent visitors to Iran. They visited in May to present at an international conference in the city Qom.

EMU, Wessner said, is forging personal connections with academic, religious and government leaders in the country.

Those connections could create partnerships that aid the establishment of a new cross-cultural center at the university, the Center for the Study of Abrahamic Traditions. The center would allow members and scholars of the Jewish, Muslim and Christian faiths to collaborate.

“We have to be intentional about relating to each other,” he said. It’s why he, Spory and 10 others from across the United States made the 2 1/2-week journey to Iran.

Cultural Immersion

The delegation departed for Iran two days after Christmas and returned Jan 13. A packed itinerary introduced the group to Islamic theologians, Armenian Christian leaders, a leading ayatollah, or Shi’a cleric, professors and students, human rights scholars, and Persian cultural experts.

“We were part of a cultural immersion,” Wessner said.

Since the early 1990s, the MCC has related with the Iran Red Crescent Society, spawning opportunities for trips like the one the recent delegation took.

EMU, too, has its own connections. For years, the university has participated in an international film program with students in Iran. They met face-to-face when the delegation arrived at the Imam Khomeini Research and Education Institute and Mofid University, both in Qom.

Twice during the trip, the delegation met with Seyed Kazem Sajjadpour, Iran’s ambassador to the United Nations in Geneva, who presented a list of proposals to further connections between the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the delegation members.

The proposals include opportunities for a roundtable on the role of religion in international relations, a peace studies conference, and study-abroad opportunities for students.

“We’re beginning to take very seriously EMU’s role relating not just to Iran but the Islamic traditions,” Wessner said. But, he added, the presentation on this single delegation is just an intermediate step toward something bigger in the future. “It doesn’t stop here.”

We Must Relate

Of all the things that could hinder the connections with Iran, Wessner says it isn’t funding, or faith, or even the logistics of planning. It’s a matter of perspective. He started his presentation with an activity to get at the heart of American perceptions on Iran.

“Give me a phrase, anything that associates in your mind with Iran,” he asked the audience that filled a crowded, standing-room-only auditorium at the seminary. “What does the rhetoric of America say?”

“Terrorism.”

“Axis of evil.”

“Nuclear weapons.”

Those, Wessner said, didn’t fit the complex reality he had seen in Iran.

“It didn’t connect for us as we were experiencing Iran that there could be a threat,” he said.

He showed pictures of the former U.S. Embassy in Tehran, the site of the hostage crisis that began in 1979 during the Carter administration and led to the diplomatic break between the two nations that has as yet been unresolved. The group’s hotel was just across the street.

“It’s a complex country,” Wessner said. The sweet lemon metaphor, he says, repeatedly came to mind.

Spory, the graduate who now works in the university’s development office, said she was surprised by the challenges of wearing the traditional head covering for women, the hijab.

“It’s the most visually different part of the culture, I think,” she said. “I wasn’t prepared for how removed it made me feel. I couldn’t hear for the first couple days.”

The degree of interest Iranians had in the West was also a surprise, the other students added.

“The way they pursued us really exemplified the hospitality we felt,” said Yoder, a 2006 graduate.

“We represented a difference,” added Brubaker, also of the class of 2006. “There’s a pretty significant difference in the way Mennonites have pursued peace.”

Wessner says the faith on each side has been the bond that’s led to the success of these cross-cultural connections.

“We must relate,” he said. “Our faith calls us to. Even when it’s unpopular, and against the wishes of our government, we do it.”

Dan Wessner, professor of international studies at EMU

The lights flicked on, and 40 pairs of eyes shifted their focus from the auditorium screen over to Dan Wessner.

An hour and a half earlier, he sat down with his students to watch a movie. Now, as always, discussion will follow.

“So,” he asked, “where do you want to go with this?”

It’s quiet for a moment. “It’s not easy,” said Wessner, a professor of international studies.

Over the next few minutes, students volunteered their thoughts.

“Horrific,” one decided. “Disturbing,” offered another.

Similar scenes are playing out this week at universities in Iran, India, Vietnam and Indiana. Students at the other schools, however, might have different thoughts to share. But that’s just the point, Wessner says.

Foreign Film Series

Three years ago, EMU partnered with other schools to “co-screen” films across cultures, Wessner says. Each participating school airs the movie, subtitled in English, and comes together as a class to write a paragraph on their impressions.

The discussion always starts in the classroom, but builds into an inter-cultural dialogue on the Internet, Wessner says.

His students will post their thoughts online in the coming days. They’ll read comments from students in other countries and respond.

“By the second post,” Wessner says, “we’re not talking about the film at all. It’s now about how we see each other.”

Which was, in fact, a central theme of Sunday’s showing.

Here Wessner leads discussion of an early film in the series.

The class watched “Focus,” a 2001 film staring William H. Macy. It’s based on the Arthur Miller novel of the same name.

Macy plays a character that is mistaken for a Jew in his Brooklyn neighborhood after he dons a pair of eyeglasses. It’s the final few months of World War II and his family finds themselves grasping to escape the violence and anti-Semitism that’s infiltrated the neighborhood.

EMU picked this film. The five universities taking part in the program this semester trade turns every three or so weeks during the school year when a new movie is shown. They rely on a few ground rules – no gratuitous sex, violence or language, Wessner says – but otherwise, controversial subjects are fair game.

Past picks include “Indochine” from Vietnam and France, “El Norte” from Guatemala and “An Inconvenient Truth,” among others.

In ‘Focus’

Wessner stood in the middle of the auditorium rows, pointing to one student after another, asking for feedback. “Is this one easier because it’s our culture?” he asked.

“It’s harder than the others,” answered Brian Hackman, a 21-year-old from Pennsylvania. “It hits closer to home.”

Alicia Hertzler chimed in a few minutes later. “It’s frustrating to watch this movie,” said the 21-year-old from Pennsylvania, “because we know it was based on the past. But we continue to do that today with different people

By Pat Hostetter Martin, director of CJP’s Summer Peacebuilding Institute

Pat Martin

In the weeks since Columbia University’s president, Lee C. Bollinger, introduced his invited guest speaker, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, as a "petty and cruel dictator," the media have been full of support for Bollinger’s treatment of Ahmadinejad. Many of the writers piled on more insults. One prominent blogger described the Iranian president as a "brown-skinned, terrorist-enabling, nuclear-proliferating certifiable nut."

The we-hate-Ahmadinejad writers were divided on tactics. Some believed Ahmadinejad should never have been invited. Others thought Bollinger handled it right by bringing him into the spotlight and then lashing into him.

The only rebuttal to the hate-Ahmadinejad stance came from a minority — the writers of perhaps 1 or 2 out of every 10 published letters — who held that in the interests of academic freedom Ahmadinejad should have been treated politely and allowed to speak.

At my university, we think there is a third way that should have been taken at Columbia. It’s one that has been successfully taken with Iran by our academics, staff and students since the 1990’s. It’s called active, but respectful, engagement. We hold our dissenting views. We express our views clearly and with integrity. But we do so in the spirit of transforming conflict rather than pouring fuel onto it. And we do so with the knowledge and humble admission that we, too, are fallible people and that we are part of a fallible nation.

While this essay centers on contact with Iranians, this could be a model for how colleges might handle any number of controversial figures who come to their campuses, whether from around the world or down the street.

My small university in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia tends to be better known among people who work at places like the United Nations, World Vision, and Catholic Relief Services than it does among academics at large North American universities. We’re situated in the shadow of James Madison University in Harrisonburg, far from the media circus we saw at Columbia. We have about 1,600 students, two-thirds being liberal arts undergraduates, one-third being graduate students. About half come from faiths other than the pacifistic Mennonite church, including from non-Christian traditions.

By virtue of our path-breaking programs in conflict transformation — through which 3,000 people have passed since 1994 — EMU is widely known by people around the world working in conflict or immediate post-conflict zones, such as in Croatia, Sudan, Sierra Leone, Nepal, the Philippines and Indonesia. Beginning with relief work after the 1990 earthquake in Iran, EMU and its sister Mennonite agencies have worked hard to earn the trust of Iranians of various persuasions, enabling a unique level of educational exchanges.

On October 9, 2007, two weeks after Ahmadinejad was insulted at Columbia, EMU president Loren Swartzendruber sat near me at a lunch round-table with one of Ahmadinejad’s advisers, Ali Akbar Rezaei, a senior member of Iran’s Foreign Ministry.

Swartzendruber, who holds a doctorate in ministry, opened the lunch with a prayer in which he asked for God’s blessing on the food we were about to eat and on the dialogue we were about to have. Swartzendruber then excused himself from the lunch with Rezaei with the explanation that he was heading to a lunch presentation on building peace through interfaith dialogue, study, and exchange, given by a pastor-scholar who had spent 1997-99 in Qom, Iran, studying Islam as well as Persian language and literature.Yes, it may seem hard to believe, but here in Harrisonburg, Va., we manage to have competing lunch events about Iran!

For Rezaei — who had been responsible for setting up meetings for Ahmadinejad in New York in September — this was the beginning of 24 hours of contact with the faculty, staff, and students of our university and its Center for Justice and Peacebuilding. The center houses a master’s-level graduate program that attracts students from around the world. Among its 100 graduate students are 9 from the Middle East, mostly Fulbright students.

Some of these students, joined by six Muslim students from other countries, had a meeting with Rezaei in which they respectfully, but frankly, disagreed with most of Rezaei’s characterizations of Iran’s policies, particularly with his description of Iran as a "status quo" state. Rezaei counter-challenged them to not take Fox News about Iran at face value. He encouraged people to come to Iran and see for themselves.

I had met and been impressed by Rezaei seven years ago when he came to my university’s annual Summer Peacebuilding Institute. At the time, he was a young scholar in Iran’s Institute for Political and International Studies. Rezaei took five successive classes, including one on strategic nonviolence and one on inter-religious peacebuilding taught by Marc Gopin, an orthodox Jewish rabbi who is now director of the Center on Religion, Diplomacy and Conflict Resolution at George Mason University.

During the two months that Rezaei was at EMU, his first child was born in Iran, and we all celebrated with him. After his return to Iran, we followed his career with interest. He spent four years in London, working in the Iranian embassy there, and then returned to work in the Foreign Ministry in Tehran as director of the North and Central America Department. On the home front, two more children were born.

It was a pleasure to see Rezaei again after all these years and to see that his intelligence, open-heartedness and curiosity were undiminished. Over the lunch — attended by more than a dozen faculty and staff members — Rezaei expressed concern that both the United States and the Islamic world contain an influential minority of people who "think they are 100 percent right, that God is with them, that everyone else is wrong, and that they are the only good guys in the world, so they should impose their views on everyone else." He noted that those who planned the invasion of Iraq and the men who organized and executed the 9/11 terrorist attacks on the United States demonstrated similar biases in their thought patterns.

Rezaei lamented mutual ignorance about each other’s countries. He said many Iranians view Americans as being uncivilized people who don’t believe in God, who like killing people and who want to eradicate Muslims. He said, "We desperately need ways to overcome this ignorance."

He didn’t have to articulate how most Americans view Iranians. All of us sitting at that lunch table were painfully aware of the ignorance about Iran in our own society. I had experienced this myself when I visited Iran as part of a Fellowship of Reconciliation delegation of "civilian diplomats" in March. We thought we would be viewed as the "enemy" in Iran. Instead our group of Americans, seeking to exchange ideas with a broad range of Iranians, was extended warm hospitality wherever we went.

Since only about 300 Americans have visited Iran this past year, people seemed surprised to hear we were from the United States. And invariably, the first thing out of their mouths was "We love you!" They would sometimes go on to say that we don’t like your president or we don’t like your government, but their feelings about "Americans" were demonstratively warm-hearted.

In the last 18 months, faculty and students from various departments of Eastern Mennonite have taken trips to Iran. Two students attended a hu
man rights conference in Qom in May, giving presentations on human rights from a Christian perspective. One of our seminary professors gave a theological paper at a conference in Iran on messianism. EMU has also hosted a number of Iranian visitors, including several university professors and an Iranian researcher from the University of Tehran, who attended two sessions of the Summer Peacebuilding Institute.

To be sure, there are numerous issues between Iran and the United States that deserve very serious scrutiny. No one is served by naivet