Concerned Scholars and Intellectuals Protest the Imprisonment of Kian Tajbakhsh

AN INTERNATIONAL QUARTERLY OF THE SOCIAL SCIENCES, based at the New School for Social Research, together with our readers and colleagues worldwide, are deeply distressed by the arrest and imprisonment of our highly respected author and colleague, Kian Tajbakhsh. Rather than remain in the United States, his commitment to Iran, for which he has great affection, impelled him to return to Iran a half-decade ago to contribute to the country's intellectual life and social development. Arjun Appadurai, John Dewey Distinguished Professor in the Social Sciences, The New School for Social Research, New York, NY, USA Timothy Garton Ash, Professor of European Studies, University of Oxford; Isaiah Berlin Professorial Fellow, St Antony's College, Oxford, UK Noam Chomsky, Institute Professor (retired), MIT, Cambridge, MA, USA Juan R. I. Cole, Professor of History, University of Michigan; President, Global Americana Institute, Ann Arbor, Michigan, USA Sir Bernard Crick, Professor, University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, Scotland, United Kingdom Paul R. Ehrlich, Bing Professor of Population Studies, President, Center for Conservation Biology, Department of Biological Sciences, Stanford University, Stanford, CA, USA Shepard Forman, Director, Center on International Cooperation, New York University, New York, USA Kurt Gottfried, Professor of Physics Emeritus, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY, USA Jan T. Gross, Norman B. Tomlinson '16 and '48 Professor of War and Society, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ, USA Adam Habib, Professor, Executive Director, Democracy and Governance, Human Science Research Council, South Africa Shireen Hassim, Professor, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa Agnes Heller, Professor of Philosophy, The New School for Social Research; Member of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences , New York, NY, USA Edward Hirsch, President, John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, New York, NY, USA Eva Hoffman, Writer and Visiting Professor, Hunter College, New York, NY, USA Stanley Hoffmann, Buttenwieser University Professor, Center for European Studies, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, USA Nicholas Humphrey, Professor, London School of Economics, London, UK Beata Huszka, PhD Candidate, Central European University, Budapest, Hungary Jeffrey Isaac, James H. Rudy Professor and Chair of Political Science, Indiana University, Bloomington, Indiana, USA Bob Kerrey, President, The New School, New York, NY, USA Fatos Lubonja, Writer, journalist, human ri