Author Archives: Dariush Nothaft

With the summer rapidly approaching, many seniors like myself are looking forward to the freedom and responsibility coming after graduation. But, the whole world’s eyes seem to be focused on the summer’s Olympic host, China. After an uprising in Tibet that brought the travails of a cultural minority to the forefront of the media, activists »

“I can no more disown him than I can disown the black community,” Barack Obama said on Mar. 18 in his now famous speech about race. The speech directed attention toward his various and sometimes contradictory loyalties to different types of American communities. As I watched the speech on television, my mind wandered to the »

My Persian grandfather is a convert: He believes in America. Raised in Tehran in a relatively privileged household, he studied architecture and made a good living before he began to work for American development initiatives. These programs paid for him to do a one-year tour of America with his family. After spending 12 months visiting »

For much of his career, my great grandfather served in the Persian army. He fought campaigns against the Kurdish “rebels” in the north. In order to conduct talks with one of the Kurdish leaders, the Persian government temporarily handed my grandfather — who was an officer — over to the Kurds as a hostage. Over »

“Let them come to eat and buy food and go back, as long as they are not carrying weapons,” said Hosni Mubarak, the Egyptian president, in reference to the numerous Palestinians flooding over the newly opened border into Egypt. The implications of his words are clear: Egyptians have deep sympathy for the humanitarian needs of »

With the official shedding of his uniform, Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf has given the White House something to be thankful for. In an age when the public seems less likely than ever to suffer credibility gaps, his use of emergency state powers to combat opposition movements punched holes in the integrity of the Bush Administration’s »

I attended the vigil on Wednesday, because I’m a conscientious member of the Yale and New Haven community; I wanted to stand in solidarity with those who had been hurt or made to feel unwelcome in any way, at any time. I was not involved in planning the vigil or the rally, nor am I »

Don’t be evil. Google possibly has the world’s most recognizable company motto. The notoriety of those three particular words stems from many places of origin: America’s distrust of big tech companies after the Mircrosoft antitrust battle, their compelling simplicity and Google’s unstained record of actually doing the right thing. Well, nearly unstained. Google famously helped »

Quick, what do Pearl Jam and the Justice Department have in common? The constantly evolving debate surrounding Internet neutrality. That the new pitch of this debate has rock stars and the executive branch weighing in should surprise no one who has followed this issue. For well over a year, Internet pundits, congressmen and many a »

It must be the end-of-the-year enthusiasm. Every time I walk to Commons, and often when I head to the residential college dining halls, I pass what I have termed “the gauntlet of guilt.” What I’m talking about is the many activists, leafleteers and other well-wishers for various causes who line up trying to raise awareness »

We are training the enemy. I didn’t say it. A recent article in The New York Times did. While some might doubt the truth of that statement because of the rumored liberal tendencies of said publication, the doubters would surely not argue with Robert Richer, associate director of operations for the CIA in 2004 and »

I am a Baha’i. That is to say, I am a member a religion less than two centuries old called the Baha’i Faith. Our calendar consists of 19 months of 19 days, and one of these months is dedicated to fasting. This month, in fact. The experience is enriching, and the eager curiosity and openness »