Hooman Majd

Hooman Majd was born in 1957 in Tehran, Iran. He was raised in a family involved in the diplomatic service, serving under the Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi.{{Cite web|last=Koppelman|first=Brian|date=2017-03-08|title=The Author of The Ministry of Guidance Invites You Not to Stay on Writing About Iran|url=https://slate.com/culture/2017/03/author-hooman-majd-on-america-and-iran.html|access-date=2021-12-08|website=Slate Magazine|language=en}}{{Cite news|date=November 4, 2013|title=From Sulking To Sanctions, A Street-Level View Of Life In Iran|language=en|work=NPR.org|url=https://www.npr.org/2013/11/04/242958294/from-sulking-to-sanctions-a-street-level-view-of-life-in-iran|access-date=2021-12-08}} Majd lived from infancy abroad, mostly in the United States and in England, but attending American schools in varied places, such as Tunis and New Delhi.

He boarded at St Paul's School, London, until 1974. Followed by attendance to George Washington University (GWU) for electrical engineering in Washington, D.C., and graduated in 1977. He studied operations research at GWU for two more years but did not complete.{{Cite web|title=Spotlight on Hooman Majd - Old Pauline Club|url=https://opclub.stpaulsschool.org.uk/spotlight-on-hooman-majd|access-date=2018-12-06|website=opclub.stpaulsschool.org.uk|archive-date=January 1, 2020|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200101234401/https://opclub.stpaulsschool.org.uk/spotlight-on-hooman-majd|url-status=dead}} He stayed in the United States after the 1979 revolution.

Majd's maternal grandfather was the Ayatollah Mohammad Kazem Assar (1885–1975),{{Cite news|url=https://www.theguardian.com/books/2012/jan/22/ayatollahs-democracy-hooman-majd-review|title=The Ayatollahs' Democracy: An Iranian Challenge by Hooman Majd – review|last=Brown|first=Roland Elliott|date=2012-01-22|work=The Guardian|access-date=2018-12-06|language=en-GB|issn=0261-3077}}{{Citation|last=Leaman|first=Oliver|title='Assar, Sayyid Muhammad Kazim|date=2010|url=https://www.oxfordreference.com/view/10.1093/acref/9780199754731.001.0001/acref-9780199754731-e-62|encyclopedia=The Biographical Encyclopaedia of Islamic Philosophy|publisher=Continuum|language=en|doi=10.1093/acref/9780199754731.001.0001|isbn=978-0-19-975473-1|access-date=2021-12-08}} who was born to an Iraqi mother and an Iranian father. The Ayatollah, along with other contemporary ulema, overcame traditional opposition to serve as a professor of philosophy at the University of Tehran.Mehrzad Boroujerdi, Iranian Intellectuals and the West. The tormented triumph of nationalism (University of Syracuse 1996) at 95, 188–189. His own father, whose origins were in the village of Ardakan, Iran, became representative of a "middle class" that was "pro-democratic and pro-modernization".Majd, The Ayatollahs' Democracy (2010): the Ayatollah at page 89, his own father at pages 90–91. The Ayatollah's son Nassir Assar (born 1926), Majd's uncle, incurred controversy and later personal danger due to his appointment under the Shah as "deputy prime minister in charge of Oghaf" (an Iranian waqf [religious endowment]). Ibid. at 89–90. The expatriate singer and author Shusha Guppy (1935–2008), a daughter of the same Ayatollah, was his aunt.

Majd's aunt is musician Shusha Guppy, and his cousin is convicted fraudster Darius Guppy.{{Cite web|last=Scruton|first=Roger|date=2008-03-24|title=Obituary: Shusha Guppy|url=http://www.theguardian.com/world/2008/mar/24/iran|access-date=2021-12-08|website=the Guardian|language=en}}

He has published three non-fiction books in the United States and in the United Kingdom, which have been translated into a number of other languages, including The Ayatollah Begs to Differ: The Paradox of Modern Iran (New York: Doubleday, 2008); The Ayatollahs' Democracy: An Iranian Challenge (New York: W.W. Norton, 2010);{{Cite web|last=Brown|first=Roland Elliott|date=2012-01-22|title=The Ayatollahs' Democracy: An Iranian Challenge by Hooman Majd – review|url=http://www.theguardian.com/books/2012/jan/22/ayatollahs-democracy-hooman-majd-review|access-date=2021-12-08|website=the Guardian|language=en}} and The Ministry of Guidance Invites You to Not Stay: An American Family in Iran (New York: Doubleday, 2013). He has also published short fiction in collections and in The American Scholar and Guernica.

Majd has also served as an advisor and translator for President Mohammad Khatami,{{Cite news|last=Shahrabi|first=Arash|date=December 8, 2021|title=هومان مجد: خاتمی با سوروس دیدار نکرد|trans-title=Hooman Majd: Khatami did not meet with Soros|url=https://www.radiofarda.com/a/F8_MAJD_KHATAMI_SOROS/1848222.html|access-date=2021-12-08|newspaper=رادیو فردا|language=fa}} and translator for President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on their trips to the United States and to the United Nations, and he has written about those experiences.{{Cite web

|title=Hooman Majd

|url=http://www.huffingtonpost.com/hooman-majd/

|publisher=huffingtonpost.com

|accessdate=July 23, 2012

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Roland Elliott Brown writes in the British newspaper The Observer that "Majd's mild reformist agenda requires him to fight on two fronts" and that he has "honed his polemical skills by defending the nascent Islamic Republic to Iranian emigres at Speakers' Corner in London."Roland Elliott Brown, "[https://www.theguardian.com/books/2012/jan/22/ayatollahs-democracy-hooman-majd-review The Ayatollahs' Democracy: An Iranian Challenge by Hooman Majd – review]", The Observer, January 21, 2012. Accessed July 26, 2012. adding that, in his opinion, Majd is "a sometimes sympathetic communicator of the regime's positions, and an enthusiast only for its most loyal oppositionists". Reviewing Majd's book The Ayatollahs' Democracy, Brown observes that Majd regards the administration as "increasingly fascistic": "flawed, capricious, but also popular, and a bulwark of sovereignty".

According to Newsweek, "Majd's Iran is a land where ayatollahs criticize each other and young people flout rules about wearing chadors. It's a land where Majd—who makes no secret of his admiration for the reformist President Mohammad Khatami—could go on to serve as the official translator for Khatami's successor and archrival, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, when the latter visited New York in September. But Majd is no Iran apologist: he ridicules Ahmadinejad's officials for their Holocaust deniers' conference in 2006. Majd's subtle central point is that "the lack of meaningful relations between Iran and the United States … has brought little advantage to either nation."

Following the 2009 election in Iran, which he "concedes [...] fielded only regime-vetted candidates and was stolen".

In July 2012 a tweet from Majd's Twitter account was made about Iranian-born Nazanin Afshin-Jam, a human rights advocate and the wife of Canadian Defence Minister Peter MacKay. The tweet read: "Fucking a Canadian minister doesn’t make you Canadian, azizam. Come back to papa …" Majd has denied making it, and in a later public tweet directed at Afshin-Jam Majd said his account had been hacked: "@NazaninAJ A recent series of tweets were made in my name as a result of a hack. Not my words, and tweets have been removed." Before the tweet Afshin-Jam had been calling on the Canadian government and the Canadian Assembly of First Nations to cut diplomatic ties with the Islamic Republic of Iran.{{Cite news

|first=Steven

|last=Edwards

|title=Iranian-American author claims hackers behind offensive tweet about Nazanin Afshin-Jam

|url=http://news.nationalpost.com/2012/07/20/iranian-american-author-claims-hackers-behind-offensive-tweet-about-nazanin-afshin-jam/

|agency=Postmedia News

|work=National Post

|location=Toronto

|date=July 20, 2012

|accessdate=July 23, 2012

}}{{Cite news

|title=Canada minister's wife targeted over Iran activism

|url=https://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5gp1bIcqsP9f3suBYP_op_eFdT5Uw?docId=CNG.8ff03667d439d786bccdcfdf3d0ab419.411

|agency=AFP

|location=Ottawa

|date=July 18, 2012

|accessdate=August 2, 2012

|archive-url=https://archive.today/20130124222133/http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5gp1bIcqsP9f3suBYP_op_eFdT5Uw?docId=CNG.8ff03667d439d786bccdcfdf3d0ab419.411

|url-status=dead

|archive-date=2013-01-24}} Afshin-Jam described the matter as serious but added that "unless I can verify exactly who sent it, I can't really comment."

• {{Cite book|last=Majd|first=Hooman|title=The Ayatollah Begs to Differ: The Paradox of Modern Iran|publisher=Doubleday Books|year=2008|isbn=9780385523349}}
• {{Cite book|last=Majd|first=Hooman|title=The Ayatollahs' Democracy: An Iranian Challenge|publisher=W. W. Norton Company|year=2010|isbn=9780393072594}}
• {{Cite book|last=Majd|first=Hooman|title=The Ministry of Guidance Invites You to Not Stay: An American Family in Iran|publisher=Doubleday|year=2013|isbn=9780385535328|location=New York City, NY}}

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Category:1957 births

Category:Living people

Category:Iranian emigrants to the United States

Category:People educated at St Paul's School, London

Category:George Washington University School of Engineering and Applied Science alumni

Category:Journalists from New York City