An orchid sits inside the main room of the Center for Iranian Diaspora Studies. The plant, nicknamed “Azadi,” was gifted by San Francisco State University alumna and philanthropist Neda Nobari to Dr. Persis Karim, the director of the CIDS, to signify the center’s inception in 2017. 

As the CIDS faces its closure seven years later, Azadi now wilts in the middle of the center’s office table — a poignant metaphor that Karim alludes to the final operations of the center.

Prior to the start of the Fall 2024 semester, Karim released a statement on Aug. 8 where she announced that the CIDS was closing its doors in Spring 2025. The decision came from Nobari, who requested for the funds from the center’s endowment to “be redirected toward direct scholarship support for SF State students,” according to the center’s closure announcement. 

The center, which is “the first of its kind,” according to Karim, focuses on documenting, sharing and understanding the experiences of Iranians in North America, specifically in the U.S.

“This is a field that’s relatively new as a sort of subgroup within Iranian studies because a lot of Iranian studies focuses on Iran — ancient Iran — the kind of glory of the great Persian empire,” Karim said. “That’s not what we’re doing. We’re focusing on how Iranians are reconnecting, rebuilding, reinventing their culture in new ways and in new places.” 

Karim has directed the center since 2017. She wanted to produce meaningful work that debunked stereotypes and perpetuated myths of the Iranian diaspora.

Being half-Iranian and raised in America, Karim did not feel she was fully a part of Iranian culture. She had her own awakening with being a part of the culture through the aftermath of the 1979 revolution and hostage crisis. 

This played a role in her vision for the center: to create a space she wished she had for her younger self.

“I feel like I’ve been the beneficiary of building a community that has helped me feel like I belong so I don’t feel as estranged and outside of Iranian culture,” Karim said. “I also feel like I do the work of trying to make others feel like they belong, even when they are a quarter-Iranian or half-Iranian, or grew up without one of their Iranian parents nearby.”

As part of her efforts, Karim made sure to go against Western media narratives that project Iran in a negative light, as she felt it was crucial for the center to be able to narrate its own story. 

“I think that’s my contribution, perhaps,” Karim said. “There’s no one story that represents Iran or Iranians in this country, or Iranian Americans. There are many stories and those many stories are part of a whole ocean of possibilities, and if people can feel like some thread speaks to them, that’s great. There’s not competition in that — there’s welcoming and inclusiveness.”

As a longtime affiliate of the center, Karim says she feels the impact of the loss heavily, noting that lots of the connections and work done through this has created a sense of community not only in the Bay Area but also around the world.

“I’m very proud of all the work that we’ve done, both here and in collaboration with other people,” Karim said. “I do feel really sad about the center closing because I think it’s a shame, you know? It takes a lot of energy to build something and to sustain it.” 

Alongside her, the center has actively been attended to by Nazy Kaviani, the program’s assistant; Nicholas Nguyen, the program’s administrative assistant; and Hasti Jafari, the content creator and preserver of the archive for the center. 

“We try really hard to be a bridge — both promoting Iranian culture to the Iranian community, but also sharing that culture with others as well,” Karim said.

The faces behind the center 

Kaviani has been a part of the CIDS team since Spring 2019. Prior to joining the center, Kaviani had been an active member of the local Iranian community. She was involved in founding the non-profit organization Diaspora Arts Connection, which works to celebrate and learn more about various cultural groups in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Even though the center is set to close at the end of next semester, Kaviani says she knows the desire for this community connection that started at SFSU will keep evolving. 

“I am grateful for the endowment that made this possible but I think that something beautiful has been planted — whether it will grow at SFSU or some other place,” Kaviani said. “It’s a need that will need to be met somehow, somewhere by some other people.”

Originally, the center was an idea that was first brought to life by Nobari. According to Jeff Jackanicz, the president of the San Francisco State University Foundation and Vice President of University Advancement, she felt the center’s establishment “was an important way to put Iranian Diaspora Studies on the map as a discipline.” In order to see her vision of the center at her alma mater, Nobari provided a $5 million endowment to the university.

As the center has evolved throughout the years with its work in the community, there have been key elements to its success — the people who have kept it alive in various ways.

While they are both currently employed by the center, Nguyen and Jafari are both former SFSU students, with Nguyen being a part of the team since 2019 and Jafari starting this fall. 

Jafari, who was born in Iran, arrived at SFSU as an international student during the pandemic but faced many difficulties obtaining a visa. The process of getting to the U.S. was more difficult with the obligations of quarantining in an alternate country, which made it challenging for them to make it to San Francisco. 

Through interpersonal connections, Jafari was able to connect with Karim, who worked with the support of a community they had already built to help Jafari come to San Francisco. Without the aid of the Iranian community, Jafari says it would not have been possible to make it here. 

Growing up, Jafari sought to find some pride in being Iranian due to the outside portrayal of the country. They were able to find this support through the CIDS and became actively involved in its work. 

“I always felt like it’s a negative thing, and it’s very easy to be like, ‘Oh, I wish I was born anywhere else in the world,’” Jafari said. “I really love all this sense of joy and pride — not just in ancient things that have happened. But more in the beautiful lives and all these beautiful people doing amazing work in the diaspora and in Iran, just being proud of that. I think that’s a very beautiful practice that the center really brought into my life.”  

Nguyen is of Vietnamese descent and has learned more about the Iranian diaspora community from the sidelines. He says he’s appreciated getting to know a different slice of the Bay Area that he was never quite exposed to. 

“I think that’s probably the most interesting [thing] because learning about the history of Iranians here, or even the current day, there’s so many pockets of people,” Nguyen said. “It’s cool to just feel like I have a better understanding of where I am, even if it’s not necessarily a culture that I don’t have strict ties to. It’s nice to know your neighbors.”

The center’s work

Throughout its years of operation, the center has hosted events that centralize the study and research of the Iranian diaspora while also uniting the community from different sectors of the world. 

In recent years, the CIDS hosted two major events: an international conference on SFSU’s campus in 2019 and a collaboration with UCLA to host another in 2023. Karim, who has attended many of these conferences, sees these events as vital opportunities for the youth to engage in learning more about the Iranian diaspora.

“Every year, there are more young scholars who want to study the impact of Iranian immigration or the impact of U.S.-Iran relations and that wasn’t possible 25 years ago when I was a graduate student,” Karim said. “The landscape is different and that’s why it’s so much more important to have hubs and connections and centers and ways to network and build an alternative narrative to what state entities like Trump and his ilk are doing, which is about war and destruction and obliterating the assertion of unique and different identities within the United States.” 

Kaviani reflected on the work the center was able to do even during the challenging times of the COVID-19 pandemic. In order to create a sense of community, the center held virtual tea sessions where constituents from various parts of the world joined in to voice their thoughts and insights on the Iranian diaspora community.  

The most recent event held by the center on Nov. 21, a screening of the documentary film “The Dawn is Too Far,” highlighted the diaspora in San Francisco and the Bay Area. In the project, Karim emphasized various stories from different generations of Iranians and different communities to provide more insight into the stories of Iranian Americans in the Bay Area. 

Some of the most noteworthy events held through the center’s work are connected to the Woman, Life, Freedom movement in 2022. 

The Woman, Life, Freedom movement resulted from the death of Mahsa Amini, a woman who was arrested and beaten to death by the morality police for not wearing her hijab according to government regulations for women’s dressing.

The center hosted a teach-in on Oct. 7, 2022, via Zoom, which consisted of Karim and Jafari speaking alongside Maziar Behrooz and Mahmood Monshipouri, both professors from SFSU, about the movement that was taking over the world. 

The event allowed for more awareness of a global issue to be brought to the campus in hopes of educating students more about how Iranian women could be supported in rough times and ask questions that they had pertaining to the movement. 

Jafari felt a sense of pride being asked to speak at the event and discuss the matter, especially since they are a native Iranian.

“I’m really proud of that cause I feel like there was a sense of community and also a sense of like people listening to you and honoring your voice as someone who has experienced something,” Jafari said. “A lot of the times, people want to talk about your experiences and that was just really beautiful to me. The connections that I made during that were just really beautiful and helpful.” 

A few months after the teach-in, a musical tribute to the Woman, Life, Freedom movement was held on campus in March 2023, which recognized the efforts of Iranian women and girls who were seeking their freedom during an oppressing time and creating a ripple effect in other countries. A noteworthy attendee made an appearance at that event: SFSU President Lynn Mahoney.

“I made a real effort to make sure she came in,” Karim said. “She was blown away by it. We do a lot of this work, unrecognized by her own institution. It’s not unusual that your own institution has no idea or no record, or no ability to recognize how significant the ripple effect is in the world. Sadly, I think that’s what’s at the heart of closing this thing. But at that moment, I felt it. I felt the ripple and that’s only one of many experiences, one of many events that the center has either sponsored or represented, which are different.”

The impact of the CIDS

When the center’s closure was initially announced, it took many supporters and constituents by surprise, as it came as a shock to those who had either worked within the center for research or who had personally been involved in the events held by the center. 

Atusa Assadi, who is majoring in cinema, recently returned to SFSU to resume her studies. As a member of the Iranian diaspora, Assadi has been a longtime follower of the center and its work. 

When returning to the university, Assadi was disappointed to find out about the decision to close the center. In turn, this prompted her to reach out to Karim in hopes of getting more involved with the center, even offering to volunteer before it closes, out of admiration for their work. 

“I’m sort of just easing back into the world of academic world, the world of being a student, and I thought it would be nice to have an aspect of that community in my student life and sort of use that as a bridge to feel more involved at SF State,” Assadi said. 

Assadi was born in America and identifies as queer — something that played a role in her difficulty finding a place within the Iranian community in the Bay Area along with the community living in Iran. As she navigated her own identity, she sought to reconnect with the traditional aspects of her roots and spaces provided within the center, which helped her bridge those two communities to better support her in this process. 

“One thing that’s really helped with that has just been working in these art spaces and academic spaces that are people’d with and run by people, either in the Iranian diaspora or sort of adjacent to it — like with Golden Thread Productions,” Assadi said. “But with the center, I feel like that’s a piece of that journey where I’ve been sort of reconnecting with that community and reconnecting with that side of my identity by being involved in these spaces that are a lot more open-minded and more expansive in their approach.”  

Through her involvement, Assadi has seen the center display a wider range of Iranian narratives by displaying communities that are not often highlighted. 

“All those things [artists, activists, members of LGBTQ+ community] are very present in our community but they’re not always the loudest voices or sort of the mainstream narrative that you hear about Iran or Iranians,” Assadi said. “So, I think that the center does a great job sort of picking out those stories that are being told and helping to platform them and helping to create community spaces for people.” 

The CIDS offered the Azar Hatefi student fellowship, an opportunity in Iranian diaspora studies which students can apply for and help fund their graduate studies. The fellowship has been offered to graduate students since 2019 for every academic school year, with an option of renewal for a second year.

Donna Fotoohi, a graduate student at SFSU, held the fellowship from 2022 to 2024.  Fotoohi applied and was accepted, marking the start of her deeper involvement with the CIDS.

Originally a student completing her bachelor’s degree at UC Berkeley, Fotoohi made her way to SFSU through her pursuit of wanting to become a teacher. 

Fotoohi had arrived at SFSU during the Woman, Life, Freedom movement, which proved to be a pivotal time of support for women in the Iranian community. 

With the guidance of the center, Fotoohi says she always felt very uplifted in her academic pursuits. In particular, Karim encouraged Fotoohi to publish her work and attend literature conferences that in turn helped her with more than her education — it helped with her self-confidence. 

“I never thought that I’d be able to give a talk at a conference, or, you know, care about writing about Iranian things like this so much,” Fotoohi said. “But I think that really, I felt like I got to feel more confident by working with the center, which was really nice.” 

Once she became more involved with the center, Fotoohi was able to see first-hand the different perspectives that existed within the Iranian diaspora community. 

“Being in community with Iranians who were really passionate about creating a world that is safe for all women but also just Iranians generally,” Fotoohi said. “I feel like being in that environment inside other community members was really fascinating, and I feel like I hadn’t had an experience like that politically with Iranians, and this is also similar around Palestine as well.” 

Upon hearing about the center’s closure, Fotoohi felt a great deal of sadness. She had aspirations of returning to the center in the future as a mentor for other students who wanted support in their education.  

“I really wanted that to be a next step for me within the center,” Fotoohi said. “So, when I realized that that would not be happening, I felt really sad for my future, in the sense of not being able to facilitate that type of relationship with people through this space. But also, I felt sad because I built so much confidence because of the work that I was able to do and the support I received through the center.” 

Fotoohi says she hopes to see the lasting impacts of the center be shown in its ability to keep building community relationships and maintain connections that have been built throughout the years through the work of events. 

“The center itself was able to organize and facilitate a space in order for us to engage in these relationships,” Fotoohi said. “Now, without the space, my hope is that these relationships and connections can continue to build and grow in another way, shape or form.” 

What’s next for the center?

Jackanicz spoke on the decision for the redirection of the funds by Nobari. According to him, the financial challenges faced by students currently attending the university stood out to Nobari, who had the discretion of allocating the funds elsewhere. 

Nobari sought to make the biggest possible difference with the resources at her disposal and concluded that supporting students directly was the way to make that impact.  

“She spent [her time on the board] learning even more about the university and becoming acutely aware of the financial pressures that are on our students — not only to afford tuition but also housing and other living expenses,” Jackanicz said. “Over time, she came to the conclusion that the way that her philanthropy and the funds that she had originally allocated to support the center — the way that those funds could have the biggest impact at San Francisco State was to look for some ways to redirect those funds that will directly support students.” 

Nobari provided funding for an additional year to wind down the operations in preparation for the change. At the time of publication, Nobari and the Foundation are still in the process of working to direct those funds toward SFSU to support students but aim to have a clearer demonstration by the middle of Spring 2025. 

Editor’s note: Nobari could not be reached for comment at the time of publication.

As the CIDS approaches its final semester of operation, Karim recognizes how the elimination of the center continues to highlight a repeating problem at SFSU, particularly in the cultural sector. 

“The center’s closing is happening in tandem with gutting of the whole College of Liberal and Creative Arts, and in particular, gutting humanities,” Karim said. “I fear that what we’re doing is depriving students of a more full experience of what university life is. But also, there aren’t very many places in a person’s life where you can have as much exposure as you can when you’re in a university.” 

Holding back tears, Karim recognizes how the work she and others have done has created a sense of goodwill and visibility toward those who did not feel as if they belonged or felt as if they ever had a sense of community within the Iranian diaspora. 

“This is my life’s work, and that’s why it’s so important and meaningful, and I think it’s especially important now because, you know, we’re living in a time — the Middle East is just constantly, all that people see, all the political turmoil and war and violence obscures so much other stuff that I think deserves to have its own visibility,” Karim said. “So, I think that’s also what makes people feel like they belong. It’s not just the negative stuff. It’s not just the ugly headlines. It’s not just the Islamic Republic — it’s so much more than that. It gives dimension to people’s sense of belonging and identity in a way that few spaces do.”