Abbas Malekzadeh Milani (Persian: عباس ملکزاده میلانی; born 1949) is an Iranian-American historian and author. Milani is a visiting professor of Political Science and the director of the Iranian Studies program at Stanford University. He is also a research fellow and co-director of the Iran Democracy Project at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution.[1][2] Milani has found evidence that Persian modernism dates back to more than 1,000 years ago
Milani was born in Iran to a prosperous family and was sent to California when he was sixteen, graduating from Oakland Technical High School in 1966 after only one year of studies.[4] Milani earned his B.A. in political science and economics[citation needed] from the University of California, Berkeley in 1970 and his Ph.D. in political science from the University of Hawaii in 1974.
With his girlfriend Fereshteh, Milani returned to Iran to serve as an assistant professor of political science at the National University of Iran from 1975 to 1977.[4] He lectured on Marxist themes veiled in metaphor but was jailed for two years as a political prisoner for “activities against the government”.[4] He was a research fellow at the Iranian Center for Social Research from 1977 to 1978. He was also an assistant professor of law and political science at the University of Tehran and a member of the board of directors of Tehran University’s Center for International Studies from 1979 to 1986, but after the Iranian Revolution he was not allowed to publish or teach.[4] He left Iran in 1986 during the time of the Iran–Iraq War for the United States, and his son Hamid and his wife Fereshteh followed.[4]
Returning to California, Milani was appointed professor of History and Political Science as well as chair of the department at Notre Dame de Namur University in Belmont, California. He served as a research fellow at the Institute of International Studies at University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley).
Milani became a Hoover Institution research fellow in 2001 and left Notre Dame de Namur for Stanford University in 2002.[4] He is currently the Hamid and Christina Moghadam Director of Iranian Studies at Stanford University.