Haleh Esfandiari who was born in 1940 in Iran is an Iranian American academic and the Director of the Middle East Program at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, D.C. Esfandiari earned her Ph.D. at the University of Vienna and her areas of expertise include Middle Eastern women’s issues, contemporary Iranian intellectual currents and politics, and democratic developments in the Middle East. In 2007 she was detained, in solitary confinement, in Iran’s Evin Prison for more than 110 days.
